K.V. Dominic Criticism and Commentary. V. Dominic Criticism--Word file.pdf · cause is not there in the world. Cause is a priori form of intuition which we add to the world. Even

K.V. Dominic Criticism

and Commentary: Essential Readings Companion

Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

From the World Voices Series

Modern History Press

Ann Arbor

K.V. Dominic Criticism and Commentary: Essential Readings Companion

Copyright © 2017 by Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya. All Rights Reserved.


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Contents

Chapter 1 - About the Poet and his Background .......................................................1

On the Cover Page of the Book K. V. Dominic Essential Readings .......................... 2

On the Poet and his Name .......................................................................................... 2

On the Poet‘s Native Town, Thodupuzha .................................................................. 6

Further Explanations of Sanskrit Terms ..................................................................... 8

Sattva, Rajah and Tamah in K. V. Dominic‘s works ................................................. 8

On the Poet‘s Home State, Kerala ............................................................................ 11

On the Poet‘s Country, India .................................................................................... 15

Chapter 2 - What Led the Poet to Write Poems? .....................................................17

On the Elegies .......................................................................................................... 19

On the Issues of Women, Parents and Old Age ....................................................... 29

The Economics of the Poet ....................................................................................... 37

Chapter 3 - Pathos in the Poems ................................................................................41

On Tragic Lives of Children .................................................................................... 42

On Hardships and Tears of Youth ............................................................................ 43

On Man‘s Selfishness and Vices .............................................................................. 45

Chapter 4 - Criticism on Government’s Claims and Promises ..............................47

On Family ................................................................................................................. 47

On Hunger and Poverty ............................................................................................ 49

On Fake Development .............................................................................................. 51

Chapter 5 - Surrealism in the Poetry ........................................................................53

On Docupoetry ......................................................................................................... 53

On Violence, Terrorism and War ............................................................................. 54

On the Need of Harmonious Life with Nature ......................................................... 57

Chapter 6 - Commentary on Selected Poems ...........................................................61

Explication of the poem ―Siachen Tragedy‖ ............................................................ 62

ii K.V. Dominic Criticism and Commentary: Essential Readings Companion

Text and Explication of the Poem ―Massacre of Cats‖ ............................................ 64

Explication of the Poem ―Lines Composed from Thodupuzha River‘s Bridge‖ ..... 70

Explication of the Poem ―Parental Duty‖ ................................................................. 71

Stylistic Analysis of the Poem ―Long Live E. K. Nayanar‖ .................................... 74

About the author .........................................................................................................77

Index .............................................................................................................................79

Chapter 1 - About the Poet and his Background

It is said that the history plays of Shakespeare help one to better understand the history

of England than volumes on British History. And it is better to read the poems composed

by K. V. Dominic to understand India of our times than perusing volumes on Indian

economics, Indian politics and Indian society of today. This is not all. Poetry is at bottom

a criticism of life. If this be true then Dominic has no peer in the context of Indian

English literature. In order that searching criticism could be done there must be a high

moral standard in the light of which the criticism would be possible. Dominic‘s poetry

unlike much of our poetry today speaks of high moral values that are at bottom Indian

and that could be emulated by other cultures also. Moral values, in order to be

practicable, need a grasp on the economic, political and social condition of the society

under study. It also needs a comprehensive grasp on the philosophy, on the background

of which the socially aware poetry could be composed.

Though Dominic's poems are not philosophical on the surface, it seems that Dominic

has a philosophical system of his own which is unique and very much Indian. If anyone

starts reading his poetry he cannot stop. Dominic is irresistible because of his simplicity

of parole below which lurks a deeply visionary message. Here is a humble attempt to

decode his poems. The text is not there in the printed material. The text is in the minds of

the readers. There are as many texts as there are readers of a particular book of poems. I

must acknowledge that I am not a seer to unravel universal truths. Hence the present

write up is composed often in the first person. When you find good poetry you cannot but

share your feelings with your fellow readers. Hence this book! If it provokes a few

readers to read Dominic more and to plunge in what Dominic calls sattvika karma, the

present reader will be more than obliged to his readers. With deepest regards to all,

Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhayay

2 K.V. Dominic Criticism and Commentary: Essential Readings Companion

On the Cover Page of the Book K. V. Dominic Essential Readings

A paratext is the threshold of a text. It includes the cover along with illustration with it

if any, the name of the author, the name of the editor if any. It is the link between the text

and off text. Its importance cannot be exaggerated. Once upon a time a drama with

deeper message was advertised as one that bursts with laughter. When the spectators

entered the theatre hall their expectations were belied. They left the hall in the midst of

the play. The advertisement was the paratext. But the drama which is a comedy or a play

pleasant and unpleasant in course of time found a niche in the realm of literature. At the

moment we have a book with the names—K. V. Dominic Essential Readings and Study

Guide. The name K. V. Dominic is kept separate from the rest. Often the name of an

author stands for the works by the author. This is an instance of metonymy. There is an

illustration on the cover above the names. There are two children together there--one is

whitish and another black. Is it a metaphor–a comparison between two apparently unlike

things? It at once reminds us of William Blake:

My mother bore me in the southern wild,

And I am black, but O! my soul is white;

White as an angel is the English child:

But I am black as if bereav'd of light.

(Blake, ―The Little Black Boy‖)

The illustration brings a black child and a white child together and announces aloud

that neither black is the truth nor white is the truth. Neither not black is the truth nor not

white is the truth. Truth is elsewhere perhaps. Thus the cover page of the book evokes

expectations in the readers that they will come across some emergent truths in the text if

they ever take the pains to go through the same.

On the Poet and his Name

The paratext informs us that the book contains poems. In fact genres are sine qua non

not only in our everyday world but also in the field of art. Does anyone go for prayer in a

post office? Does anyone go to post a letter at a church? Similarly if any one infers from

the paratext of a book that it should be a horror story and if to his/her utter dismay the

text is found to be a tale of love will s/he not be disappointed? Since the Essential

Readings and Study Guide is a book of poems about social justice, women‘s rights and

the environment, the mindset of the readers are prepared for such poetryscapes.

But before that the readers are ordinarily apt to question--who is the poet? The answer

is K. V. Dominic. In other words K. V. Dominic is the efficient cause and words are

material cause. Whenever an event takes place, especially in the realm of human

relationship we ask who has been the cause or architect of the event. Well as Hume

observes there is no necessary connection between a cause and effect. Kant tells us that

cause is not there in the world. Cause is a priori form of intuition which we add to the

world. Even if we agree with the notion of causality we feel that there cannot be a single

cause behind any effect or a poem for our purpose. K. V. Dominic could not write these

poems if there were no social injustices. Had he been born during the rule of Mahabali or

About the Poet and his Background 3

Maveli he would have no occasion to write such poems. Because during Maveli‘s golden

rule:

Equality prevailed in the society;

no lies, no crimes, no deceits;

and no cheat;

no poverty, no child death.

All were happy;

heaven cannot be different! (―Onam‖ 38)

In short no one cause, in other words, Dominic has not been alone responsible for the

poems that he has written. Countless causes and condition have been responsible for

composing the poems. Dominic has been simply instrumental in this poetic activity. The

groans of the society today seem to have snatched the pen of Dominic to write in their

bare sheer wailing and thundering style. But read the poems. Why ask who wrote it?

Discussing the life and times of the author shifts the spotlight from the text to extra-

textual things. Roland Barthes has already announced the death of an author. There is no

organic relationship between the signifier and the signified. Every language has its own

syntax idioms and way of manifesting itself. When the poet seeks to express himself

through a language he must obey the rules of the language and thereby he is carried away

from his objective. Besides, language springs in response to language spoken earlier.

Hence no poet can express himself through language. So no poet writes a poem. Despite

that we cling to the myth that a piece of poetry is composed by a person called poet.

Barthes points out that the origin of a work may be with the author but the destination

of the work lies with the reader. The work may have been a three dimensional one forged

by the author. But when it is photographed by the readers‘ mind it becomes two

dimensional. The reader adds a third dimension to the work from his mental and spiritual

resources. So where is the text? It is half created and half perceived. The text is in the

readers‘ mind. Hence the author dies and the reader is born while decoding a text. And

the present portrayal of Dominic‘s poetry partially owes to the understanding of the

poems by the present reader. This must be acknowledged. We cannot study anything

objectively or as it is. If we want to determine the speed of an electron we cannot

determine its speed and vice versa.

Close reading method does not take any extra-textual account of the poet. With close

reading school, who is the poet? S/he who has written the poem? What is the poem?

What the poet has written is the poem? It is something like–Whose house is this? This is

Ram‘s house. Who is Ram? Ram is the person who lives in this house. This is argument

along a vicious circle. We propose to read the poems of Dominic from Close Reading

point of view.

Close reading school reads the text and not the extra-textual context in the background

of the same. In that case we might ask what the name Dominic means. Dominic is a

Roman Catholic name which means ‗Of Our Lord‘. Curiously enough we have also a

Dominique in Sefirah. Dominique is another version of Dominic. Our Dominique de

Miscault who is a great artist in her own right is also God‘s own. Spiritualism in art is


what constitutes her aesthetics. She is an abstract artist. One wonders whether

spiritualism lurks in the poetry of K. V. Dominic also who is under our study.

Well the book of poems by Dominic under study has a poem entitled ―Who am I?

Does not the name of the poem remind the reader of the great philosopher Sankaracharya

who cried: Who are you? Who am I? Where from have we come? Who is my mother?

Who is my father? Once someone seeks to probe into the essence of the other, one is apt

to probe into the essence if any of himself/herself.

And let us see how Dominic describes himself:

―Who are you?‖ my superego asked

―I am Prof. K. V. Dominic, MA, M.Phil, PhD,‖ my id replied

―Alright, what else?‖

―English poet, short story writer, critic, editor.‖

―Keep that long tail under your armpit,‖ superego exploded.

―An illiterate farmer is greater than you;

His service is greater than your scribbling; (―Who am I?‖ 196)

We have asked who Dominic is. And Dominic himself has taken a pre-emptive step.

He has written the poem ―Who am I?‖ Whenever a person asks himself/herself ―Who am

I?‖ s/he is divided between the observer and the observed of his/her own self. In other

words, Where is Dominic? There is the observer Dominic and the observed Dominic.

Dominic borrows terms from Freudian psychology and thereby he is not one but three in

superego, ego and id. In Vedanta there is the self which is made of food. In that shell

there is the life force as self. Inside that there is the self as mind. Below that there is the

self made of knowledge. Below that there is the self that is all bliss. Thus where is

Dominic, Dominic is not found. If a person is not one, but six persons, the person is not

there.

Every work of poetry has the open sesame hidden in it to guide the readers how to

decode it. And may be Dominic‘s poetry demands psychological approach to his poems.

The interior dialogue between the superego and the id makes the poem ―Who am I?‖ a

curious literary type and teaches us to probe into our own selves. Where is the self?--one

is apt to ask.

Well, let us go back to our question, Who is Dominic? Who was his mother? Who was

his father?

―An Elegy on My Ma‖ gives us a vivid pen-picture of Dominic‘s mother and

Dominic‘s childhood and Dominic‘s attitude to his mother tongue or Indian vernaculars.

When he writes about his mother he does not use the word mother in the title of his

poem. Mother is substituted by the Indian ma. Because one whose mother tongue teaches

one to call his mother as ma cannot address his dear mother in a foreign tongue. This

shows that Dominic is an Indo-English poet. And what does Dominic tell about his ma?

Ma, I do remember

the brambly path

you treaded for decades;

How you raised


your brothers and sisters

when your parents died;

Struggled hard for sustenance

even after marriage;

How much you suffered

bearing six sons

in your womb!

Ma, how can I forget

the way you reared us?

Dawn to dusk

worked on the farm;

Made the field fertile

with gallons of sweat.

We were never starved,

nor knew any poverty. (―An Elegy on My Ma‖ 89)

A wonderful poem! In the patriarchal society we cannot talk much about our mother.

We do talk about our father. But here Dominic has to tell many things about his mother.

From the very childhood Dominic‘s mother had to face adversity. Early in her life she

lost her father. She did not lie low in the face of adversity. She raised her brothers when

she was a virgin. After marriage she bore six children. She worked hard in the farm. And

mark you, she did not let her children starve and feel the pangs of poverty. This

description of the mother teaches us how mothers can live two hundred percent, hundred

percent working outdoor and hundred percent working in the household. In countryside

even today mothers do work at par with the fathers. There is no gender discrimination.

Gender discrimination came upon the scene with the advent of capitalism and western

culture. Capitalism selected the males for technical education and the women were cast

into the household. Landed property was registered in the name of the male karta of a

Hindu Undivided Family (HUF). The poem does show what great potential the women

have to build the nation.

An HUF is a legal term related to the Hindu Marriage Act. The female members are

also given the right of share to the property in the HUF. The term finds reference in the

provisions of the Income Tax Act, but the expression is not defined in the act.

The Hindu Joint family is headed by a karta, meaning manager, who is usually the

oldest male person, who makes decisions on economic and social matters on behalf of the

entire family. The patriarch's wife generally exerts control over the household and minor

religious practices and often wields considerable influence in domestic matters. Family

income flows into a common pool, from which resources are drawn to meet the needs of

all members, which are regulated by the heads of the family

Perhaps the physiocrats are the economists in the right sense of the term. Quesney the

father of physiocratic economics observed farming as the chief economic activity. The

farmers need houses to live in and clothes to wear. These minor activities are assigned to

artisans and industry. If the income from agriculture and the same from cricket are added

the GDP might look formidable. But if food is not there what gain is there in the income


from cricket? Two horses and two economists are two horses and two economists. They

are not four. There must be weighting given to the source of income. Income from

agriculture and income from industry are not at par.

And surely farming here might be used as a metaphor. The whole country lies fallow.

We need mothers who must work at the fields and make the soil fertile.

Dominic, a master of irony in verbal communication, does not utter a single word

against women having many children. He is a common man like us addressing the

common folk. In fact, true human emotions breathe through his poems. Richly wrought

thoughts and sentiments of the elite and the learned do not suffocate the language of his

poems. ―An Elegy on My Ma‖ by Dominic shows that Dominic‘s parents were farmers.

When Dominic says that his mother did not let him and his brothers feel the chill of

penury, we infer that he was not born with silver spoon. He was rather born in a poor

family. And when we learn that he is an M A, M Phil, Ph D, it is anybody‘s guess how

great Dominic had to suffer to climb the so called higher echelon of the society. But

Dominic is not at all proud because of that. He frankly tells us that an illiterate farmer is

better than us, the professors and officers and industrialists. We need rice and wheat and

barley. If the farmers all over the globe go on strike for a week are the legislations in the

American Senate any good? President Trump needs two square meals a day. Or else how

can he come to White House in time. Ours is a civilization where the expenditure on

overhead exceeds what we really produce. Ha Hah!

On the Poet’s Native Town, Thodupuzha

Now the present reader is curious to know in which town or village or city Dominic

lives. Dear fellow readers, do not be cross with me. Curiosity is the lifeblood of human

civilization. Or else why should we bother to know which dramas were composed by

Shakespeare? Do chimpanzees or lions have such curiosity? That is why they have no

culture and no civilization. Aristotle wrote physics and dwelled on metaphysics. While

physics is concerned with the world of senses, metaphysics is concerned with the beyond.

Man is never content with the contingent. He is always eager to lift up the veil that

surrounds the existence to know the whole truth about the existence. Disinterested

curiosity is also the life blood of science. In this context the present author would most

humbly request his fellowmen not to look down upon the neighbours who are fond of

washing the dirty linen in public. They are the unacknowledged poets, critics, scientists

and so on. Were they absent from the society there would be no human civilization.

Sorry for the digression. Our question at the outset was about the whereabouts of

Dominic. Where does he live? Our close reading school does not let us ponder over any

extra-textual context. But Dominic‘s poetry is imbued with much of sattvika guna.

Guṇa (Sanskrit) depending on the context means 'string, thread or strand', or 'virtue,

merit, excellence', or 'quality, peculiarity, attribute, property'. There are three guṇas

called: sattva (goodness, constructive, harmonious), rajas (passion, active, confused), and

tamas (darkness, destructive, chaotic).


Well the guṇas are cornerstone of Hindu philosophy and Dominic a Christian though

has assimilated Hindu philosophy. He is not a Hindu, but he is an Indian and his being is

a melting pot of everything whatever excellent in Indian thought. Christianity is also an

Indian religion. While the Anglo Saxons were Christianised in the 6th century, we

Indians became Christians only in the 1st century AD. It was Saint Thomas who taught us

Christianity.

Dominic uses the paradigm of guna in the poem ―What is Karma?‖

―. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Three types of karmas:

Tamasik, Rajasik, Satvik.‖

―Kindly explain, Father.‖

―Speech and deeds not caring result,

minding not feelings and emotions,

just like the action of a terrorist

is Tamasik, which you shall never do.

Words and actions

done to please oneself

fall under selfish Rajasik karma. (―What is Karma?‖ 248)

The first thing that strikes the reader is that it is a Christian Father or priest who speaks

of Indian philosophy. Indian Christian Fathers are no less Indian than any Hindu Indian.

The poem is in the dialogue form. This reminds us of Plato‘s Dialogues and Ramkrisna

Kathamrita. The dialogue form is very apt for teaching thoughts that the world does not

pay heed to.

Here we had better dwell on the guna approach to karma. The approach of so called

science is quantitative and not qualitative. Science can describe how hydrogen and

oxygen mingle to make water. But science cannot tell us how the emergent qualities like

waterness of water, its liquidity, its thirst quenching power are derived from

hydrogenness of hydrogen and oxygenness of oxygen. As long as the approach of science

remains quantitative no viable philosophy of life can be raised on the foundation of

science. The Indian approach to things is qualitative or founded on guna or quality.

Science can describe what constitutes sugar. But if there is no sugarness in the sugar will

it be sugar?

The Indian approach posits that three qualities are inherent in all things. They are

sattva, rajah and tamah. These three Sanskrit terms are detailed in the poem ―What is

Karma‖ (Essential Readings 248-249)

Speech and deeds that do not care for the result and not minding feelings and

emotions, just like the action of a terrorist, is Tamasik.

Words and actions done to please oneself fall under selfish Rajasik karma.

Words and deeds done to serve others are selfless Satvik karma.

Every person has all these three gunas or qualities of which one will be dominant over

the other two and that determines his/her nature. People having sattva guna as dominant

or satvik people are very few in this world.


Further Explanations of Sanskrit Terms

The three gunas—sattva, raja, and tama

result in five states of the mind, and every

person has a distinct personality because of this.

The first is Moorhavastha in which tama guna

dominates and sattva and raja remain dormant.

This state is triggered by passion, anger, lust,

greed and possessiveness. A person could,

therefore, be inclined towards sin, ignorance,

nihilism and desire. This state of mind also gives

rise to meanness.

The second is Khshiptavasthaa in which raja

guna is dominant and the other two are dormant.

This state is brought about by feelings of love or hatred. A person in Khshiptavasthaa is

often inclined or attracted towards contradictory forces like religion or sin, love or hate,

attachment or renunciation, knowledge or ignorance. Thus, when sattva guna overpowers

raja guna, the mind tilts towards religion, love, attachment and knowledge; when raja

guna overpowers sattva guna, the opposite happens.

The third is Vikshiptavastha, in which sattva guna dominates over raja and tama

gunas. Vikshiptavastha is attained by abandoning feelings of love and hate, passion and

anger, greed and possessiveness and by working without desire. In this state, a person is

inclined towards religion, knowledge, affluence and asceticism, but he could also go

insane due to the presence of raja guna. Intellectual and inquisitive people usually go into

this state of mind. But in spite of being an elevated state, this is not a normal condition

because the mind is influenced by external factors.

The fourth is Ekagravastha in which thought is focused on a single subject. This is a

natural state, in which the mind is not influenced by external factors. In this state, the

mind becomes completely pure. This is achieved by constant practice of dhyaan or

meditation. In yoga, this state is called Sampragyat Samadhi. The practitioner interacts

with forces of nature, becomes discerning and appreciates the difference between mind

and atmaan.

The fifth is Niruddhavastha. A practitioner achieves this state after Ekagravastha with

rigorous practice. After reaching this stage, he develops a special kind of asceticism

referred to as a satiric trait or condition of the mind. The practitioner gets attached to this

trait and either negates or restricts the possibilities of asceticism. Thus, after negating or

controlling all hindrances, he reaches the stage of Niruddhavastha where all acquired and

communicated sanskaaras are destroyed.

Sattva, Rajah and Tamah in K. V. Dominic’s works

In any thing whatever, these three qualities must exist together. Even in a poem. But in

some things sattva is dominant. In some things rajah is dominant. In some other things

tamah is dominant. Thus things become respectively sattvika, rajasika, and tamasika.


Dominic has dwelled on these three gunas in relation to karma with wonderful precision

seldom found in textbooks of Indian philosophy. Whatever activity is not tamasika and

rajasika is sattvika. Well writing poetry is also a karma. It is often a social act by a lonely

man. With the present reader Dominic‘s poetry is sattvika in essence. Because its spirit is

altruistic. One of the qualities of sattva is that it is open and above board it illuminates

everything. It is light unlike tamas which is heavy and which has affinity to darkness.

Now since sattvaguna is predominant in Dominic‘s poetry it is not difficult to find out

where he lives. Yes, let us read ―Lines Composed from Thodupuzha River‘s Bridge.‖

The very name ―Lines Composed from Thodupuzha River‘s Bridge‖ reminds us of the

lines ―Composed upon Westminster Bridge‖ by William Wordsworth. Wordsworth‘s

poem opens with:

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by (―Composed upon Westminster

Bridge, September 3, 1802‖)

In Wordsworth the poet posits that those who ignore the beauty of the scenery at

Westminster Bridge while passing by are dull of soul. Wordsworth does not address the

bridge endearingly. There is no evidence of his kinship with London. But Dominic‘s

―Lines Composed from Thodupuzha River‘s Bridge‖ opens with:

Looking down from your girdle bridge

my eyes and my mind bathe in thy morning beauty.

(―Lines Composed from Thodupuzha River‘s Bridge‖ 138)

Here Thodupuzha, and not the readers is the addressee. The poet endearingly observes

that the bridge is the girdle of Thodupuzha. Thus it seems that there is some sort of

kinship of the poet with Thodupuzha. And if we guess that Dominic is the resident of

Thodupuzha it will not be far away from truth. Because in the whole poetical work there

is no other name of a village or of a town addressed endearingly.

Thodupuzha is an ancient town in Kerala 200 kilometres away from Trivandrum, the

State capital. There are Jain and Buddhist relics in the neighbourhood dating back to 300

BC. But it is the town that touches the river or ‗puzha.‘ And it is the place where a rivulet

or ‗thodu‘ has become a river or ‗puzha.‘ In other words Thodupuzha is a town caressed

by a river and it is the privileged place where there has been a phase shift in the course of

a river. The river is as it were inalienable from the town and the town itself is surely a

river changing ceaselessly since time immemorial.

The very title of the poem ―Lines Composed from Thodupuzha River‘s Bridge‖

invites comparison with Wordsworth‘s ―Composed upon Westminster Bridge.‖ While

Wordsworth‘s poem is a regular sonnet with three quatrains and a clinching couplet

Dominic‘s poem consists of fifteen lines. But Dominic‘s poem is also sonnet-like in its

reticence. Wordsworth finds London donning the morning which will be doffed

presently. London clothed in morning is majestic in its calm only because of the mighty

heart lying still along with houses and ships and domes and temples open to the fields and

the skies. But after an hour and so the mighty heart will be awake and smoke will cover


the sky and rob the Sun of its brightness. Thus time is also a motif in the poem. The calm

of the morning is destined to be shattered by the noon time city life. Dominic‘s poem is a

companion one to Wordsworth‘s. True that ―Every second passed in our lives / is

irredeemably lost forever. / . . . / The waters that I gaze now also flow beyond my eyes.

(―Lines Composed from Thodupuzha River‘s Bridge‖ 138) But this is true in the

contingent. The river Thodupuzha however represents time in fast motion--Time flashes

in a meteoric speed and hence we cannot brood over every second of time flowing by.

The river stands for the flow of time. It springs from Sahyadri to pour down into infinite

ocean.

Geologically speaking, Sahyadri harks back to the time when Gondwana broke apart.

Legends tell us that Parasurama the incarnation of Vishnu hurled his axe into the seas

which reached Kanyakumari. The larger part of South India was at that time occupied by

the sea. The sea out of its bounty gave away the whole tract of land to the sage and

withdrew the waves from there. Sahyadri has been depicted as the abode of gods. In other

words Sahyadri is timeless. The river Thodupuzha springs from the timeless hills only to

meet the timeless seas. In other words human life moves from one eternity to another

eternity and hence although in the contingent everything is transitory like the morning

descried in London, in the seer eyes of Dominic every moment is eternal and every

moment is sacred. While Wordsworth marvels at the sight of the majestic morning of

London, Dominic bathes in the river of life and light and we too bathe with him and feel

the touch of the flowing nectar. Thus while Wordsworth‘s poem is gloomy, scared of the

mighty heart waking up in no time, Dominic‘s poem is charged with an everlasting yes

telling us that whether awake or asleep we are bathing in the stream of nectar. While

Wordsworth‘s poem dwells on a transitory moment the poem of Dominic transports us

from the transitory to the eternal. Any drop that comes from the eternal and merges with

the eternal is eternal. This we can assert without any misgiving.

Parks in India are as old as civilization. The Ramayana describes Ayodhya as littered

with parks and fountains. But most of the parks nowadays in India are perhaps forged on

the model of parks in England, first envisioned by Ebenzer Howard. In order to do away

the alienation of urban people from Nature, Ebenzer first introduced town planning

decked with parks. The Municipal Park in Thodupuzha has figured in the works of

Dominic.

Thodupuzha Municipal Park beckons the poet in the evening to unburden the cares of

a life getting and spending—a haven for townsmen fleeing from the burning houses. The

burning houses might remind one of Bunyan. Bunyan‘s hero found the city he inhabited

burning. And he asked everyone to leave the city in quest of peace. And Dominic feels

that every house in modern urban life is in flames. Hence people come to parks in the

neighbourhood of Nature to get some respite.

Dominic gives a beautiful pen-picture of Thodupuzha park:

Though not vast, an ideal park

Full of trees and river adjacent

Symphony of the chirpings from above


Rustling of gentle breeze on leaves

Mixed sounds of flowing vehicles

(―Thodupuzha Municipal Park‖ 202)

This could be an archetype of Eden. But in this Eden the sound of flowing vehicles

and the rustling of trees mingle. With Dominic perhaps civilization must be two hundred

percent--hundred percent urban and hundred percent sylvan. In this confluence of the

urban and sylvan in the park the sight of the little children playing reminds Dominic of

his childhood days. Once he was swinging from a rope and he fell there from. His dear

mother beat him in consequence instead of saying sympathetic words to him. That

childhood of the poet is no more.

A score year back the poet visited the park with his two kids and they enjoyed the park

with great joy. But alas! Those children are grown up and away. They are no more with

the poet. Thus the poet describes his predicament at an age when he cannot go back to his

childhood and when his own children are grown up. Nowadays nuclear families alone

survive in the towns. And when children are away the parents suffer from a kind of

alienation. This is a commonplace mental state of parents who have presently crossed the

middle age of life. Dominic excels in depicting the mental state of common place

situations. He is not after themes earmarked for poetry. Anything could be a theme of his

poems.

The present poem not only dwells on an aspect of Thodupuzha his hometown, but also

describes the predicament of his mind set at a particular age where is heard the mingled

measure of the fountain and the cave, and how he passes his days at Thodupuzha. The

high brow among the readers might debunk the poem as on too commonplace a theme.

But many of us the readers at the age of fifty or sixty will find our heartfelt feelings

described in the poem with telling power.

On the Poet’s Home State, Kerala

There is a tribe of intellectuals who are internationalists before they are nationalists.

They can go against the interests of their nation to serve some foreign power whom they

worship. But this is not natural. Every man loves himself. At the same time he loves his

mother. That is why we love ourselves and love our family. We love our family and at

the same time we love our town. We love our town and we love our State. Thodupuzha is

in Kerala. And the poet‘s love for his State is time and again.

In the elegy written on the death of E. K. Nayanar, Dominic exclaims:

It is impossible to believe

our dearest CM is no more.

(―Long Live E. K. Nayanar‖ 3)

E. K. Nayanar belonged to Kerala. And he was three times the CM of Dominic‘s State

Kerala. Nayanar‘s demise came upon the poet as a great shock. Because Nayanar was an

epitome of ideal leader of the people. His heart was full of the milk of love and

compassion which are essence of socialism according to Dominic. And surely though a

communist and though he was accused of being pro China during Chinese aggression,


with Dominic Nayanar was truly a patriot. He had no foes, only friends. He championed

the cause of the denied and the deprived. Dominic calls Nayanar a rare species of a

communist. True. Because communists have unlike Nayanar class enemies. Unlike

Nayanar, the communists are internationalists first obeying Comintern and then patriots.

Dominic describes the Onam vividly. It is a harvest festival taking place in the month

of Chingam–either in August or in September. People of Kerala must come home during

the festival even from far countries. Children run for flowers in the morning and make

‗pookalams‘ in the courtyard or at the entrance of their house. ‗Poo‘ means flowers and

‗kalam‘ means arrangement. In the language of the poet:

Pookalams with

myriads of flowers

in circular pattern:

a fantastic sight!

(―Onam‖ 37)

This floral design on the floor is forged to welcome Mahabali, once upon a time the

king of the three worlds. Onam is a festival that continues for ten days. Each day a fresh

circle is forged. On the first day there is one circle. On the second day there is another

circle in addition to the earlier circle and so on. On the tenth day the tenth circle is

clinched. Each circle stands for a Hindu deity. The first circle for example stands for

Lord Ganesha. People in new robes are full of gaiety relishing ceremonial food such as

pumpkin erissary, beet pachadi etc delighting in Onam songs, plays and dances. Onam

folk songs are being sung through the generations. Many of them are sung in praise of

Mahabali. This Onam folk song echoes in Dominic:

the golden rule of Maveli

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Equality prevailed in the society;

no lies, no crimes, no deceits;

and no cheat;

no poverty, no child death.

All were happy;

(―Onam‖ 37-38)

Such songs are collectively called ‗onapattu.‘ Onam dances include Kathakali,

Kaikottikali, Thumbi thullal, Kummatti kali, Pulikali etc.

Spirited competitions, sports games and arts are familiar sights during Onam. Boat

races, rowing in perfect rhythm singing boat songs are pageants of rare beauty in the

world. Boat race or vallam kali takes place among snake boats with more than 100

oarsmen in each boat rowing and singing at the same time. Nature also participates in the

jubilee. Clear sky, bright sun, fragrance of flowers everywhere! Thus Dominic is adept in

delineating Gods plenty in our enjoyment of the animal spirits and merrymaking loud

with song and dance.


The festival is reminiscent of the golden age. Long time ago there was an Asura

(demon) king named Mahabali. He founded a paradise upon earth. Everywhere there was

abundance and abandon. No one was hungry, no one was poor. And love was universal.

But Lord Vishnu the god of gods of Hindu pantheon outwitted the demon Mahavali and

made him a prisoner. And the golden age went out of joints. Was it justified to imprison

the great demon Mahabali who created heaven upon earth? Are gods just at all when the

predicament of men is concerned?

Mahabali gets temporary release from his imprisonment to visit Kerala during Onam.

Dominic says:

Maveli visits on Onam;

Fed up,

he returns in tears.

(―Onam‖ 38)

In short, below the surface of the great gaiety of Onam, there is the undercurrent of

tears. Only three lines of the poem in a flash turn the merriment of Onam into a mournful

song or a dirge. This is possible only when the pen is held by a master artist.

The wonderful festival Onam where joys and sorrows mingle takes place only in

Kerala. Dominic says:

My native State Kerala

blessed with equable climate

and alluring landscape

crowned by the Sahyas

she lies on the lap of Arabian Sea

Multitudes of brooks and rivers

flow through her veins

Thousands of species of flora and fauna

Six months long rainy season

followed by summer bearable

Autumn and winter fear to enter

Tourists call it God‘s own country

(―Multicultural Kerala‖ 161)

There have been regional novelists like Thomas Hardy of Wessex, Bibhuti Bhusan

Bandyopadhyaya of Chhotonagpur, West Bengal. Dominic is a poet of a State. He is the

poet of Kerala. He speaks of the multicultural Kerala. Approximately 54 percent of the

people are Hindus, 26 percent of the people are Muslims and 18 percent of the people are

Christians here. Thus it is a multi-religious society.

Chellamma Antharjanam, a seventy years old Hindu woman abandoned by her dear

and near ones rushes to put her head on the railway track to make an end to her life. A

young lady Resiya Beevi, mother of four kids and Muslim by religion rescues her and

takes her to her house. She treats the old lady as her own mother. A Hindu woman, the

old lady is a strict vegetarian. Resiya sees to that and bears all her expenses as long she

lives. (―For the Glory of God‖ 108-109)


The Chattannoor Saint Mary‘s Church was getting ready for its annual festival.

Christians, Hindus, Muslims--all were participants in the festival committee. Atul

Krishnan, a Hindu boy lived opposite to the church. A motorbike accident killed him.

The church cancelled the festival. The church cancelled booking of elephants and bands.

This is the holy land of Kerala--Gods own land. (―An Ideal Festival‖ 213)

The Gods own Land is proud of great social workers, great leaders like E. K. Nayanar

and she is very much proud of the child prodigy born to a trapeze tightrope performer.

having no formal education

surprised all as mental calculator

from the tender age of three

University scientists bowed their heads

amazed at her skill at age of six

(―A Tribute to Sakuntala Devi‖ 208)

It is Sakuntala Devi.

Gods own Land Kerala is blessed with untold wealth of flora and fauna. Jackfruits

here serve as feast to birds and squirrels. The mango trees bear fruit for others. The

coconut trees standing erect on lean tall foot are a marvel to all architects. But it is a pity

that man is destroying Nature by raising dams and building airports. The poet sadly tells

us:

I can hear the scream of elephants, tigers,

Boars, snakes and all wild animals

(―I can Hear the Groan of Mother Earth‖ 229)

The forests of Kerala play hosts to Asian elephants, Bengal tigers, giant squirrels and

variety of deer and leopards.

Wolfgang flew all the skies from Germany to Kerala at the sad silent call of plants and

animals. And he has been long forty years in the dense forests of Kerala:

Twenty species of snakes,

fifteen types of amphibians,

two twenty species of birds,

sixty varieties of butterflies,

two thousand kinds of plants,

(―Wolfgang, the Messiah of Nature‖ 135)

To eye-witness the bounty of Nature in Kerala one had better visit Wagamon. One

must reach there along steepish street running like anaconda. And at once loud cataracts,

some like white paint and others like eternal curtains, eternal fallings will engross one‘s

eyes and ears. Tall and thick pine trees support the firmament. Rolling green and pine

leaves deck the ground with a carpet. The nights there are loud with cricket. (―Wagamon‖

131)

If myths and legends have to be believed in, Kerala God‘s own land was once upon a

time ruled by the great demon Mahabali. Abundance and abandon reigned in the country

during the golden rule of Mahabali. But god Vishnu himself robbed the people of their


happiness by deposing Mahabali. May be Vishnu felt that no deus ex machina should

bring about peace and happiness among men who were once expelled from Eden by God

the Father himself. People must rise up to heaven on their own through their karma.

But right now our angel poet a Mahabali visiting Kerala during Onam looking about

with baleful eyes laments:

Once God‘s own country with equable climate

Rainy season for six months

and mild summer for the rest of the year

Blessed with brooks, rivers, lakes and greeneries

Now people are crazy for pleasures and luxuries

tumbled nature‘s balance and bounties

resulting scanty rain and intolerable heat

So where shall I free from this fretful land?

(―Where shall I Flee from This Fretful Land‖ 210)

The poet Dominic is so much in love with his native land Kerala that he cannot

migrate from here despite the fact that it is being turned into a wasteland. Dear Readers,

Please allow us to extrapolate. Dominic as an Indo-English poet is widely known abroad.

And maybe he got offers from abroad to serve there and stay there. But he will not leave

his native State and country. Kerala is a State in the country of India. And Dominic‘s love

for Mother India is the life blood that flows through the very veins of his poetical work.

The very words mother, matha and ma are hallowed with Dominic. Because

How shall I define mother‘s love?

No lexicon term can convey it

Inexpressible, indefinable, unfathomable

immaculate, eternal and divine is maternal love!

(―Maternal Attachment‖ 232-233)

On the Poet’s Country, India

Dominic‘s ode to Mother India—―Victory to thee Mother India‖ (p. 92) opens with

the paean:

Victory to thee Mother India;

for you did unite the races

divided on religion,

culture, language and colour.

The poem ends with:

Tagore, Gandhi and Nehru

were your great sons;

no doubt, your womb

will bear more great children,

who will lift us from this trance

and tether us back to the global home,

and you will sleep on the lap


fondled by your Mother World.

The poem is significant because it is aware of and proud of the heritage of the 19th

century India.

A hundred years back

thy great son, Tagore

sang in praise of you.

Matha, you could rouse then

the hearts of Punjab, Sind, Gujarat,

Maratha, Dravida, Orissa and Bengal.

This poem not only echoes the national song but also speaks of the deep influence that

Tagore cast upon Dominic. Tagore likened the Indian civilization with an ocean where

the streams of different culture have mingled. Dominic is by the by a significant Tagore

scholar. But Dominic is not a votary of raw nationalism. Our nationalism must pave the

way to internationalism. Dominic dreams that our motherland should sleep on the lap

fondled by mother World. Thus there is the vision of a World mother in whose lap all the

nations of the world will gambol. A rare imagery of world mother where every culture,

every religion, every language, every nation will find its home.

Chapter 2 - What Led the Poet to Write Poems?

So far we have discovered Dominic‘s mother, a glimpse of his childhood, his

hometown, his native State, his country and his awareness as a member of the human

race in the outline, from his poems. Of course we do not have his voter ID, Pan Card,

Aadhaar Card etc. Hah Hah! But think of a poetical work without a poet. Impossible!

Dominic is the speaker of the poems. He is the protagonist of the drama of his poetical

works and they will gradually unfold the character called Dominic or the poet.

We must have a functional author of any verbal work. Otherwise we cannot make

sense of it. When a cuckoo sings or a crow caws we do not focus on which crow caws or

which cuckoo sings and we cannot make sense of it the way we make sense of human

speech. But if we ever mistake a bird for a man crying we at once respond to the same as

we respond to the cry of a man. Think of Joseph Poorgrass in Thomas Hardy‘s Far From

the Madding Crowd walking along a lonely path in the still of the night. He hears an owl

crying—Whoo Whoo Whoo! He takes it for the voice of a man and, at once, he kneels

down saying in all humility—―Joseph Poorgrass of Wetherbury, sir‖.

Hence, despite the fact that Roland Barthes has announced that there has been the

death of the author, any book of poems must have an author. An author is one who has

composed the poems. What are the poems? That which has been composed by the author.

Thus true that the poems are there only for our eyes to read and ears to hear and our

minds to judge. But unless they are felt to be written by a human speaker we would not

decode them as we decode human language. So any speech whatever deemed to be

human speech, poetry itself being a speech, has a speaker. And who is the speaker? He

who has uttered the speech. And man being a metaphysical animal always seeks to know

the speaker and his motive and intention lifting up the appearance of the poems or a

pattern of words.

In fact the poet is everywhere in the poem. Poetry is a thing seen through a

personality—the poet. Hence in other words when we read the poetical works of X or Y

or Dominic we read the world as seen through the eyes of Mr X or Mr Y or Mr Dominic.

Poetry is the representation of the world in some way or other. We readers represent them

in another way. When Barthes exclaimed that the author is dead what he meant thereby

was that the reader is the final creator of the text. And of course a single text could

multiply into as many texts as there are readers of the single text. Where is the text? It is

not there in the printed matter. It is there in the mind of the reader. Plato posited that this

world is a representation of the indeterminate reality. No representation can be accurate.

Otherwise there cannot be any difference between the original and representation. If the


original were alone and if there is an exact representation of the original there will be no

aloneness of the original and the original will not be there. With Plato the reality as

represented by the world is an illusion. The poets through the representation of the world

take us farther away from the reality. Hence Plato banished the poets from his Republic.

And no wonder that readers like the present one of Dominic would be summarily

banished from his Republic as well.

Be that as it may, once we acknowledge the virtual existence of the author who is the

protagonist in the drama of a poetical work and once we acknowledge the existence of a

reader of a poetical work the reader is apt to ask: what led the author to compose poems?

What led Dominic to write poems? Unlike Sakuntala Devi who started computing at

the age of three, Dominic did not forge verses in his infancy. His mother would be

sometimes very angry with him. Once, when a child, Dominic fell from the swing and his

mother chided him. (―Thodupuzha Municipal Park‖ 202) But Dominic the child did not

have the occasion to implore his mother

Mother mother pity take

Never shall I verses make.

Dominic‘s first poem was composed when he was 48 years of age. Dominic himself

dwells on how his first poem was written in his preface to his Essential Readings thus:

One of my colleagues, Prof. George Joson, of the Department of Mathematics

drowned in a river as he was driving back to his house at 11 pm on 14 May 2004.

It was raining cats and dogs throughout the night, and the body was found out in

the early morning frozen in the driver‘s seat of his car. . . . Joson was my intimate

friend, living with his unemployed wife and three little daughters—resembling

three angels—just two hundred metres away from my house. Thus my ―bad

heart‖—heavy and brimming with grief, released the tension on paper after two

days. (p.xvii)

The anecdote reminds us of Valmiki:

A couple of Krauncha birds one day

As they were busy in their love play

The male one was hit by an arrow

While the female cried out in sorrow

This touched Valmiki‘s soft heart

He cursed the hunter, in short

A future O hunter you‘ll never have

For killing a bird in the midst of love.

(Ramayana by Rajaram Ramachandran, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 2007)

Valmiki cursed the hunter and cursed Death. Presently Valmiki exclaimed: What is it

uttered by me! And the creator Brahma appeared before and told him that he had created

sloka or poetry. With the craft of a poet he should delineate the life story of Rama.

What Led the Poet to Write Poems? 19

On the 14th May 2004 Joson drowned. Next day, the day when Joson‘s body was

buried, E. K. Nayanar, the Kerala Chief Minister who was very dear to Dominic died.

And Dominic‘s first poem ―In Memoriam George Joson‖ (p.1) was followed by ―Long

Live E. K. Nayanar.‖ (p.3) These two poems won great acclaim from fellow teachers and

goaded Dominic to write more and more. The fellow teachers were Brahma in this case.

Brahma told Valmiki as to what to write about. And this role was played by a piece of

paper in Dominic‘s situation:

Hey poet, kindly heed to my plea

before you thrust your pen

into my bleeding heart

Though I am a passive sheet of paper

I have a soul as vibrant as yours

Please don‘t vomit your trash

through your volcanic missile

The less you write the more we live

the more our plant family lives

Kindly write on the need of the day

the necessity of conservation

of plants and animals on earth

(―On Conservation‖ 163)

Finally God Himself dictates him a poem: ―Write My Son, Write‖ (pp. 74-87). It

reminds one of Caedmon. Caedmon was an unlettered shepherd. Once God commanded

him to sing in a dream. Waking up he sang. That was the true beginning of the Bible in

Anglo Saxon language.

On the Elegies

As we have already observed, the death of a friend, George Joson, prompted

Dominic‘s first poem, we had better read it with attention. The poem opens with the

address to the dead soul:

Why did you leave us so soon, dear Joson?

(―In Memoriam George Joson‖ 1)

This is commonplace and human. Even though we do not die willingly, in most cases

when someone dies we fancy that he has left us at his will. The dead body of Joson lies in

front of the poet. But the poet employs Arundhati-darsana-nyaya (Sanskrit term which

stands for the process of moving from the known to the unknown), to infer a deeper truth

from a visual imagery in the contingent:

The most painful was the sight

When your youngest kid,

not knowing what has happened,

kissed your face often

and plucked flowers

from your wreath;


tossed them to her sisters weeping and screaming


The innocent child does not know what death is. But we the onlookers know what

great loss and bereavement the little child faces without knowing. With the little child the

father is not dead. He cannot die. The child tears the flowers from the wreath about his

sleeping father‘s body and flings them at the weeping sisters. There could be no more

pathetic a sight. The poet ironically posits that just as a child plays with the wreaths about

a dead body so does God play with human life.

As flies to wanton children we are to th‘ gods,

They kill us for their sport.

(King Lear Act 4, scene 1, 32–37)

And there is no escape from it. ―When He comes with His chariot, / none can say—

―wait‖.‖ (―In Memoriam George Joson‖ 1) Who else is God but Death? Mark you, Death

does not come in his chariot. Death comes with his chariot. Chariot is a kind of fast

moving carriage. Think of Elijah in Old Testament. A chariot of fire drawn by the horses

of fire carried Elijah to heaven. And surely the chariot has come to Joson and death has

no sting. But we are mortals living in the contingent governed by our habits and limited

knowledge. We weep even when one leaves us for a journey to heaven. Our attachment is

perhaps to blame for this. It blinds us.

The four lines from the 17th

fytte to the 21st fytte shift the focus.

Now we understand the mystery of your ever being fast--

fast in your words;

fast in your walk;


This clearly brings home the personality of Joson to the readers. Joson speaks fast. So

unless you are all ears to him you cannot follow him. He walks fast. So unless you walk

fast you cannot walk with him. These are his humour. These could be praises of Joson.

But his qualities could be at the same time his nemesis. He has been ―FAST UNTO

DEATH.‖ (―In Memoriam George Joson‖ 1) Must be he drove very fast during the

fateful night on the 14th of May.

Thus there is a narrative. There was a learned professor whose name was Joson. He

was fast in everything, fast in speech, fast in action. One night he was a little late. He

drove fast homeward. Flood water drowned the road. Joson could have been a little

cautious and slow. May be the car skidded and he drowned. The poet went to pay last

respects to his dead friend Joson and saw how helpless was the unemployed Joson‘s wife

with her three children. It is ironical that Joson drove fast only to meet them and Joson

thereby drifted far away from them. The narration however sets the time sequence in a

different manner. At the outset we find Joson dead. The poet asks: ―Why did you leave us

so soon, dear Joson?‖ (―In Memoriam George Joson‖ 1) Any death makes the thoughtful

contemplate on the import of life. At the outset the poet asked: Why did you leave us so

soon, dear Joson? As if man is responsible for his death. Is he? After a moment‘s

https://www.owleyes.org/text/king-lear/read/act-iv-scene-i/root-71878-13/80982-13


reflection the poet murmured to himself that ―We are all puppets in His hands, / dancing

to His various tunes.‖ (―In Memoriam George Joson‖ 2) But finally the poet resigns

himself to the will of God:

We are all

bound by His will

to be here

to be away.

(―In Memoriam George Joson‖ 1-2)

Men must endure their going, hence even as their coming hither. ―Ripeness is all.‖--

That is Shakespeare‘s. With Dominic ―We are all puppets in His hands.‖ The reader

asks—Is it?

Thus the first poem in Dominic‘s poetic career flings before us an overwhelming

question. Dominic lifts and drops an overwhelming question in our plate. The poet is one

who serves foods for thought to the readers.

On the 14th May Joson passed away. Joson was the personal friend of Dominic. It was

a personal loss of Dominic. Before the loss of Joson and the grief thereof could be met

foursquare, the people of Kerala were plunged into mourning at the death of E. K.

Nayanar, a leader of the masses. A vast surging sea of humanity followed wailing and

weeping on Nayanar‘s last journey. No rain could stop them; no sleep could retreat them.

Nature herself seemed to participate in the mourning. Dominic also became the part of

mourning. Thus mourning for personal loss mingled with the mourning of the masses for

a general loss became sublimated. And when the poet exclaims in his address to Nayanar,

Your absence from amidst us

shows your presence among the stars.

You are our polestar

who saves us from the Darkness.

(―Long Live E. K. Nayanar‖ 4)

does not the reader find Joson too effulgent in the skies? Thus the poem on the death of

E. K. Nayanar is a sequel to the poem on the death of Joson. Both are elegies. Both are

songs of bereavement and could be sung with a flute. True to literary type they raise

questions about destiny, justice and fate. They are Christian elegies and proceed from

sorrow and misery to hope and happiness. Because with Christianity through death one

passes from life to eternity.

There is a third elegy in ―Ammini‘s Lament‖ (p. 46). Ammini is a baby name among

Keralites. It is a cat. It has three children--kittens. Two of them are missing. Absence and

death are metaphorically synonymous. When the child is absent for long don‘t we think

that he or she must have been killed? If someone is dead is s/he not absent and will s/he

not remain absent for all time to come? And think of Ammini‘s anguish when she finds

two of her kitten missing.

Ammini can‘t forget

even after ten days


the loss of her darlings.

Day in and day out

she wanders on all sides

seeking the twins of her triplet.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ammini‘s changed a lot;

no greed for food;

no frolic with her son.

How long will she go on wailing?

(―Ammini‘s Lament‖ 46)

Ammini‘s incessant cries echo in the premises. Her wails remind the poet of the

laments of Gandhari at the sight of the hecatomb of Kurukshetra. Gandhari had lost

hundred sons in the battles of Kurukshetra. When we find our dear ones dead, we miss

them. What is death but our dear ones missing? The simile that compares Ammini‘s

sorrows with those of Gandhari also throws a flood light on the epic Mahabharata. If we

agree that God himself contrived the great war of Kurukshetra, what benefit was derived

from the same? On the contrary, the wails of Gandhari and other mothers echoed at the

hecatomb called Kurukshetra. The wails were as heart rending as the laments of a cat

mother echoing in the household of the poet in quest of her missing children. And think

of the cat mother refusing food after it lost her two children. Does it not describe the

mental predicament of the mothers who lost their children in Kurukshetra and who lose

their children in battlefields?

Earlier men had direct communication with animal world and plant world. In

Shakespeare‘s Macbeth, the weird sisters or the Wyrd sisters who can see into the future

are directly in touch with Graymalkin and Paddock. The Wyrd sisters are wiser than us

and Dominic is a poet with their esoteric wisdom. The poet reminds us of the fact that

animals are as affectionate as humans. Neither wealth nor learning nor power but love

and affection make a man noble. The same nobility is found among animals.

Ammini‘s lament has been put in a frame. Her kittens have not been dead. They were

sold away. This is child trafficking. In fact Ammini‘s lament is more a lament than an

elegy. Lament is a genre in its own right that gives a passionate tongue to acute grief.

And the lament in this poem is on two levels. It was the poet himself who had sold the

kitten of Ammini. He puts himself in the dock in front of the bench of his own

conscience. The poem is a monologue. It opens with the poet lamenting:

How to expiate

the merciless sin

committed to my cat?

(―Ammini‘s Lament‖ 46)

Shakespeare‘s dramas such as Macbeth portray such so called villains who are capable

of great passions and griefs. Dominic here reminds one of Macbeth who realized that the

thane of Cawdor had killed sleep and Macbeth would sleep no more. But it is a pity when

we compare ourselves with Macbeths or the poet we feel that we are postcards. We are


not capable of great passions and laments. We have no conscience as it were. The poem

―Ammini‘s Lament‖ depicts the poet as human in his sorrow mickle. The poet as we have

already observed compares the grief of Ammini with that of Gandhari. Gandhari curses

Krisna. And does not the cat curse the poet? This puts forward a philosophical question.

The insects cannot recognize the multi-cellular ones or animals. But an animal can

recognize the insects. Similarly an animal cannot recognize man the so called rational

animal though man can recognize an animal. A dog cannot recognize man as man. But a

man can recognize a dog. Just as we do harms to animals and the animals might curse us,

so we do curse the gods. And are the gods who bring misfortunes upon us some

supermen whom we do not recognize although who know us?

The poems also raise questions as to jurisprudence. Is not killing an animal or stealing

a child animal from its mother as serious a crime as the offence of killing a man or

trafficking in children?

―An Elegy on My Ma‖ (p. 89) stands out among the poems composed by Dominic.

Dominic‘s mother is dead. But her face is ever fresh in the mind of the poet. Dominic

gazes at her face inwardly. She is smiling. Ripples from the smile of the face stream

down to raise a tsunami in the mind of the poet. The poet‘s bereaved heart burns. The

glow in the eyes of the mother darts like a lightening to the poet‘s burning heart.

Although the poet does not undertake to describe how his mother looked like, the glow of

her darting eyes and her smile makes her alive before our mind‘s eyes. Does it not

suggest that wherever she went she illuminated and that she braved all the odds of life

with a smile?

Time is the best healer. With the passage of time whatever terrible a grief might be,

fades. The pangs of loss become blunted. But ironically enough the poet‘s sorrow

increases day after day since the day she went into the earth. Even many years after the

mother‘s demise, the poet is not reconciled with the death of the mother. It seems to the

poet as if she died presently.

The poet recollects how hard she worked even before her marriage. She worked in the

farm and she never let her six children feel the chill of penury. But could her children

serve her in the selfsame way? The poet asks:

How can your cent percent

match with our ten percent? (―An Elegy on My Ma‖ 90)

None can reciprocate for what s/he receives from his or her mother. The poet

exclaims:

Truly mother‘s love

is the purest love

and divine love. (―An Elegy on My Ma‖ 90)

We have seen how Ammini, a cat wept for her two missing children and gave up food

and drink. The poet also has the heart of a mother. Just as a mother looks upon her baby

as the gift of God, so does Dominic look upon a kitten received from his friend as God‘s

gift. We can imagine with what happiness he received the gift of a kitten from his friend.


It was a gift of God through his friend. No other poet, to the best of the knowledge of the

present reader, has looked upon a subhuman species with so much love and affection.

Although a cat is a cat, it is as dear to Dominic as a human child. He sees the

manifestation of God in her face. He hears the voice of God in the mews of the cat. And

when the mews of the cat echoes in his house he hears God in that. And an untold bliss

fills his heart.

The mother of a poet, Dominic loves all children, be they human or animal. And

Dominic leaves the kitten in the car of one of his friends by mistake. And the kitten flees

through the window of the car. And Dominic misses the kitten and wails as piteously as

the cat mother Ammini lamented who had lost her two kittens. Dominic muses: Is she

living or dead? / Is she seeking still her mother (―Attachment‖ 100).

We cannot but recite the hymn to maternal love in the poem ―Mother‘s Love‖:

Maternal love, love sublime

Inexplicable, unfathomable

Noblest of all emotions

Visible both on human beings

and other beings

Both on domestic animals

and wild animals

Mother feeding babies

seeking food for them

with much labour

She eats only after

they are fed or

leaving portions for them

(―Mother‘s Love‖ 199)

The Durgasaptasati of the Markandeya purana however observes in this context that

men bring up children with the hope that the children will look after them in their old age.

But look at the birds. They fly about thousand times a day and carry grains in their beaks

to feed their little ones despite the fact that they are hungry. But once the little ones are

capable of flying they fly away without taking notice of their parents. The parents also do

not lament for the children who fly away. But even when we try to do our duties to our

parents while they give us cent percent we can give them ten percent. Dominic in his

elegy on his mother addresses her departed mother:

Ma, I couldn‘t be

at your bedside

when you murmured

throughout night

―Call my children;

ask them sing.‖

(―An Elegy on My Ma‖ 90)


―Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap‖ (Galatians VI, King James

Version). That is the Bible, the highest voice under the scene. We who could not perform

our duties to our mothers must address our dead mothers and cry:

What would be our fate, Ma,

when we become old as you?


When we were children we used to hear our parents saying that they obeyed their

parents and performed their duties to their parents. But they were afraid that we would

not do our duties in the self same way. True. Now we also tell the same to our children

who have grown up. Dominic also addresses his dead mother and says:

Ma, you were never

deserted by your children.

What would be our fate, Ma,

when we become old as you?


These lines are very eloquent. We have caught Dominic off his guard. Firstly it is here

that Dominic gives vent to real anxieties. He is afraid whether our children will look after

us when we grow very old. This is a feeling rather strange in the realm of poetry. The

poet may give a tongue to our anxieties with the shape of things to come in the economic

realm or political realm and so on. Poets might condemn the moral standard of the youth.

But where is the poet who fears that he would not be looked after by his children when he

grows old? This shows that Dominic is different. Secondly Dominic is as old as the

present reader and gives a tongue to the anxieties of the present reader. We pray that

other readers should be free from such anxieties. Besides, Dominic writes his poem

exactly as he talks to his dear and near ones. Thirdly, it follows that Dominic does not

have any choice for themes in poetry. Anything could be the theme of poetry ranging

from the stars in the firmament to a bathroom. That is an aesthetics. Finally we must

agree that whether we like it not, his poems are stamped with his real feelings and

emotions.

―An Elegy on My Ma‖ gives a lengthy description of the sufferings of the mother

presently before death. The lassix tablets are still on the table. They remind the poet of

the untold suffering of the mother. When she laboured for breath, she cried for these

tablets. Dominic remembers:

Your sleepless nights,

sitting and wheezing,

when we were fast asleep,

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

long six years,

bewailing often

―Why doesn‘t God

call me back?‖


and finally bed-ridden

for a long week

with no food

but a little water—


Does it not remind us of the cat mother who gave up food and water? It is said the

mother murmured throughout the night—―call my children and ask them sing.‖ Did she

have a premonition of death? Or did she see death visiting her with a coffin. Because she

was heard to whisper ―Remove the box.‖ This is how indeed we speculate when we muse

over the last thoughts of our dying mother or the dear ones. When she suffered from

breathing problem she whispered ―God take me back.‖ When death visited her with a

coffin, she whispered ―Remove the box.‖ Dominic wonders whether she was reluctant to

leave her children and the world. And finally she asked her children to sing a requiem.

This wavering of thoughts of the dying mother makes her character human and lively

before us. We wonder whether death has its strings. Did not death rescue the mother from

her sufferings that continued for long six years? And again perhaps one feels reluctant to

leave the much loved worldly life of ours where three parts are pain.

True that only these four or five elegiac poems touch upon the battle for life in the face

of death but the major corpus of Dominic‘s poems are directly or indirectly associated

with life in death or death in life. And most of his poems are heavily weighed with the

cargo of laments. Elegy is their leitmotif. But we will have a glimpse of them later in a

different context.

The elegy on his mother is a robust portrayal of a woman fighting hard for survival

throughout her life. Early in her life she lost her parents. Even before marriage she

worked hard to bring up her brothers. Marriage did not give her any relief on the physical

and economic plane. She bore six children and worked in the farms. She lived two

hundred percent–hundred percent in the kitchen and the household and hundred percent

working hard outdoor, walking across the brambles.

Dawn to dusk

worked on the farm;

Made the field fertile

with gallons of sweat.


Dominic said that although they were six, no one starved, no one felt the pangs of

poverty. And as we already know, the son of a farmer, Dominic has climbed up to the

higher echelon of the society. He got the highest possible education available in India and

he retired as a professor. Dominic seems to be very proud of his farmer mother. She has

been heroic in her battle for life. And hers is an instance of life in death. She asked to

sing beside her deathbed at the moment of her bidding adieu to the world and us. She

reminds us of the useful toil and the short simple annals of the poor. She reminds us of

some mute inglorious Milton, some Cromwell guiltless of the country‘s crime.


Elegy as a genre commonly laments the death of a person. Consequently it could dwell

on the last battle of life against the impending death. Dominic excels in vividly

describing the situation.

A sheep addresses man and tells him:

I have seen with my eyes

and heard with my ears

the last cries of my parents.

When they became old

you cut their heads

and ate their flesh.

(―A Sheep‘s Wail‖ 8)

Indeed a child fleeing from modern-day Syria might address the murderer of its

parents in the selfsame parole. Is there any big difference between a sheep and the child

of a man? Before we approach the delineation of man‘s struggle for breath in the face of

death we had better look at the live picture of a few animals dying. Dominic is fond of

cats. And he used to have pet cats. Ammini is a baby-name in Malayalam. And Dominic

has a cat christened Ammini. There are two poems one after another on Ammini‘s

laments and Ammini‘s demise. They are companion poems. Read together, they could be

a narrative where Ammini is the central character. In Ammini‘s lament, Ammini misses

two of its kittens. Absence of dear and near ones could be as much loss as one‘s loss of

one‘s kin into the jaws of death. Indeed the death of a dear and near one implies his

absence for all time to come. And just as we men cannot bear such absence of our dear

and near ones so do cats. The kittens are missing for long ten days.

Ammini can‘t forget

even after ten days

the loss of her darlings.

Day in and day out

she wanders on all sides

seeking the twins of her triplet. (―Ammini‘s Lament‖ 46)

Presently Ammini changes a lot.

no greed for food;

no frolic with her son. (―Ammini‘s Lament‖ 46)

The poet asks:

How long will she go on wailing? (―Ammini‘s Lament‖ 46)

If we did not know that Ammini is a cat, the description could be deemed as that of a

bereaved mother of a human child. Thus Ammini, the cat is no different from any

Ammini, the human mother of a human child. So that is the indicator of Ammini the cat.

If Ammini‘s demise is deemed to be the continuation of Ammini‘s story, then it narrates

how misfortunes in her life come in a train. She is poisoned to death. The poet notes:


Poisoned to death

Ammini‘s struggle

for breath and water;

our effort in vain

to keep her alive;

and her final adieu

without even a sound; (―Ammini‘s Demise‖ 47)

Poetry often functions to revive the memory of the readers‘ past experience. The law

of association reminds the present reader of the silent groans of a child who softly told his

mother---Ma I will not live any longer! Ammini dies without a sound.

A neighbour of Dominic poisons four cats at a time. A massacre of cats! All the four

die.

One after other,

all the four died,

struggling hysterically

for water and breath,

soft velvety fur

drenched in saliva

and excrement. (―Massacre of Cats‖94)

We can see, as it were, the cats struggling hysterically for water and breath live. This

tremor of life has been juxtaposed with the lifeless saliva and excrement. Saliva and

excrement could repel the readers. But when our dear ones die amidst saliva and

excretion our tears well forth. What is ugly turns into something very lovable at the

magic touch of Dominic‘s Muse. This lovely heart rending scene is charged with the

aesthetics of cruelty that dazes our conscious mind and appeals to our subconscious mind

to cleanse the same.

―To My Deceased Cats‖ opens with:

―Lo, our Rocky is struggling;

God, is he departing us?‖

Pussy cat cried to his friends.

―Has cruel man poisoned him?‖ (―To My Deceased Cats‖ 136)

Yes cruel man poisoned him. Rocky groans and gasps. But he has no complaint

against the man who poisoned him.

Rocky ended with a loud wail;

his body shuddered and died. (―To My Deceased Cats‖ 137)

A pathetic sight indeed! The struggle for life against approaching death, always a

kinaesthetic imagery etched by Dominic shocks our bodies and minds violently.

Not only cats are poisoned to death by man, man equally dismembers the limbs of

Nature:

Siachen glacier feeding several rivers


irrationally axed and dug (―Siachen Tragedy‖ 156)

Here Siachen glacier feeding several rivers is human as it were and it is irrationally

axed and dug.

The celestial fire that burnt in the heroic mother of Dominic exerted enormous

influence on the poet Dominic. And they give us the clue to his boundless love,

sympathy, reverence for motherhood, wives, daughters and sisters; in short for

womanhood, which is littered all over the works of Dominic.

While a lavish wedding feast v in his full swings, Dominic could see:

. . . two ragged girls outside

struggling with the dogs in the garbage bin. (―A Nightmare‖ 6)

The sad melody and accents of Iambic as we found in Gray recur here. It is a pity that

in the society of ours we men treated our fellowmen often as street dogs and cats. Think

of Browning‘s Duke in the poem ―My Last Duchess.‖ He killed his wife just as one

would kill a wild horse. Her only offence was to smile at the sunrise and to smile at

sunset, to smile at any person with whom she crossed roads. The Duke commanded her to

smile only at him.

On the Issues of Women, Parents and Old Age

When we talk of poets of our time we must say Dominic is a rare type of a poet. He is

truthful and honest. He does not present his poems in borrowed robes at a meet where

poetry is feasted upon. In a nightmare Dominic sees:

See, what a mansion that double storied edifice!

Luxury rooms, lawn and swimming pool;

An old man and his wife resided there;

sitting at the phone with sighs and moans,

longed for the calls of the sons abroad. (―A Nightmare‖ 6)

The same imagery has been elaborated in the poem ―Gayatri‘s Solitude‖ (15). Gayatri

is now eighty two years old. She was widowed at thirty five; mother of five children--

three sons and two daughters all in the States. The pointedness and details of description

as in ―widowed at thirty five, mother of five children, three sons and two daughters,‖

remind one of Keats and Yeats. Keats shut the La belle dame sans merci with kisses four.

But he failed to blind the reality of the day to day world—the beautiful woman without

mercy. The same pointedness of description and sometimes statistics has been handled by

Dominic to convince us of the ugly face of reality where the pale princes and pale

warriors, a mother at the age of eighty-two who was widowed in her thirties and who

brought up five children against all odds heroically is now in thrall--an old age home. The

nine and fifty swans at Coole in Yeats seek to prove that hearts do not grow old. And

Dominic observes:

An old lily flower

pale and faded.

Dawn to dusk,


sitting in an armchair,

looking at the far West,

longing for her childrens‘ calls,

she remains in solitude (―Gayatri‘s Solitude‖ 15)

An imagery of loneliness and alienation, which is time and again one wonders whether

our parents and our near and dear ones will wait for phone calls leaning on the gold bar of

heaven in the self same way.

The eighty two years old lady recalls:

How lucky were her parents!

Lived happy, died happy;

always with their children;

sons, daughters,

daughters-in-law,

sons-in-law,

a dozen grand children,

a house full of mirth. (―Gayatri‘s Solitude‖ 15)

Whither is fled that visionary gleam, the glory and the dream? Dear Poet, this

disappearance of the glory and the dream is not always because of the self-centredness of

the children nowadays. You yourself could not turn up at the bedside of your dying

mother. Capitalism and globalization are to be blamed. The young do not get

employment opportunities in their native place or in the native State or in the native

country.

The more I read Dominic I am carried away more by his courage to speak. I am

seventy. I have two children. Dominic speaks on behalf of countless parents like us. It is

we the parents who have given birth to our children and it is we who looked after them

when they were helpless babies and it is we who sought hard for their employment. But it

is a pity that:

Parents in eighties and nineties

needing bed rest and medication

admitted in hospitals by children

When asked to pay the medicine bills

desert them and disappear for ever

Some are dropped on roadside

Some even in thick forests (―Parents Deserted‖ 240)

Dear young readers, Will you blame us for begetting children? Damn your Malthus!

Proton, electron; positive, negative;

Male, female; made for each other.

Pains and pleasures: God‘s own gifts.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Instincts divine, divine pleasures;

who can abstain them?


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Connubial bliss,

heavenly happiness;

merging of two souls;

fulfilment of His plans. (―Connubial Bliss‖ 13)

God‘s plan is to herald Life‘s march in the existence. Of course, the parents must not

look upon their children as their property. The parents are mere agents in giving fillip to

the flow of life in its march as willed by God. If they look upon the children as their

property they are fools. Because we men could not have offspring of our own. We are not

the cause of the existence. And we cannot rein the flow of the system at our will. This is

perhaps an indirect comment on the present rage on population control. Since man has

not initiated procreation and since he cannot stop the process of procreation he cannot

have right on children. In fact man has no right over anything in the universe. He is a

product of a system and he had better flow with the system without any ego unless it is

the ego to serve the system and serve God‘s will. Dominic reminds us that during old

age:

The monarch of yesterday,

feels humbled today.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Today‘s torturer

tomorrow‘s victim;

we live with ironies. (―Old Age‖ 35)

Dominic warns us however that despite the fact that we do not own our children, in the

sense that one owns a movable property in the conventional sense, we must not let our

children be reckless:

Never dig your graves as Dhritarastra did (―Parental Duty‖ 239)

Dominic observes that it is the duty of the parents to become role models of their

children. That is flowing like autumns leaf:

Best is to be models to your children

Leading lives of dharma and karma (―Parental Duty‖ 239)

Does Dominic thereby remind us:

Today‘s torturer

Tomorrow‘s victim; (?) (―Old Age‖ 35)

At the same time one asks what it is like to perform dharma and karma in old age.

Well, dear readers, between you and me and off the record, Dominic is now a retired

man. His children are well established. Now he devotes himself to spread the

commonsense philosophy and the voice of God as heard by himself to make the much

loved world of ours lovelier.

When men stand in long queue before the wine shop like ants in a line before their

hole:


A similar queue is found on the other side,

where poor women wait for their rations. (―A Nightmare‖ 6)

A little girl complains:

Ma, why didn‘t God create me a little more beautiful? (―Beauty‖ 12)

With the heart of a mother, Dominic tells us:

Only spiritual beauty gives eternal joy.

My dear lass, be like the sun,

brightening this dark world with your inner beauty. (―Beauty‖ 12)

Many of the poems of Dominic are dramatic lyrics reminiscent of Browning.

Helen is a student who takes down notes in her class faster than a typewriter. Although

she is blind she is the light of the class. Indeed light illuminates everything. But does the

light see itself?

She is the light of the class,

light of the family,

light of the village,

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Light fighting against darkness,

Eternally! Hopefully! Surely! (―Helen and her World‖ 22-23)

This is an instance of death in life. An instance of oxymoron--a girl blind though is the

light of the village. The repetition of the word light here is time and again. We remember

―Pale warriors, death-pale were they all‖ in Keats. ―La Belle Dame Sans Merci‖ has them

in the thrall of darkness. Helen is the antagonist who brings light to them. In fact any

speech, be it a poem or a story or an essay is a discourse. It begins only after another

speech id clinched up. And we are sure Dominic‘s poems will have verbal responses

from myriad ends. And this discourse, by me Mukhopadhyaya, has begun where Dominic

ended his speech. Mark you, how the repetition of light here in Dominic does away with

the gloom in the repetition of the word pale in Keats. And invest the poem with

Dantesque imagination.

Language as such exerts power over the listeners and the readers. Aristotle speaks of

three ways of persuasion in ethos, pathos and logos. So far we came by pathos in

Dominic‘s poems. But his ―International Women‘s Day‖ is an instance of logos loaded

with reason and data.

International Women‘s day;

celebrations all over the world;

meetings held;

programmes chalked out;

promises showered;

fund allotted;

celebrities honoured;

her praises sung hoarse


coarse in her life‘s course

mockery‘s rhetoric in these celebrations! (―International Women‘s Day‖ 26)

The International Women‘s Day is celebrated in all its grandeur. But the apparent

glitter and the grandeur of the celebration are at bottom hollow sham. The poem begins at

a climax. And then the anticlimax sets in. The celebration is a game for the elite in the

society. The lot of women hasn‘t changed a micron from what it was earlier.

Women is the game!

Birth to death,

an instrument of lust (―International Women‘s Day‖ 26)

Her birth is an ill omen. And the society sees no guilt in foeticide. If mothers are thus

humiliated, there is no life. If we do not let mothers to be born we will checkmate the

flow of life. Gender discrimination in childhood is found everywhere. Priority is given to

the brother. His left over is the grub of the sister. She has no toys to play. She always

envies her brother. When mom and her dad love him she gets only reproaches. She is

seldom educated and always dependent:

slave to her husband,

servant to her in-laws.

Bears the burden of her birth;

lives for her children

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Has no place in politics:

councils, assemblies, parliaments,

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

she has no right

to enter her father‘s abode;

no place in clergy.

She is always the Other. (―International Women‘s Day‖ 27)

There is no better poem on the state of women today in the world. But we must

humbly seek to point out that earlier the women were not so unfortunate. Dominic‘s

mother herself worked both indoor and outdoor and sustained her family, because in the

works afield, there was not that wide gender difference. When technology and modern

offices showed up, when capitalism had on its full sway over the society the women were

sent to the kitchen. Because the common run of men cannot give equal education to men

and women. The West is at heart patriarchal. Milton himself observes that while God the

Father is a God of Adam, Adam is a God of Eve. And the life of Milton as delineated by

Dr. Johnson tells us how Milton‘s wife had to be on her knees before Milton and his

friends at her father‘s house. Thereafter only she could return to Milton. No wonder when

the Anglo Saxons, the race of Milton, came to India to rule, they would give employment

only to male. Be that as it may, the poem ―International Women‘s Day‖ ends in a hymn

to motherhood.

Venerable is women,


for she is your mother;

she is your sister;

she is your wife;

she is your guide;

she is your teacher;

she is your nurse;

and above all,

she is your angel. (―International Women‘s Day‖ 27)

You will not find any other poet in Indian English literature who is as respectful to

women and motherhood.

―Laxmi‘s Plea‖ is another dramatic lyric of great power and force. The poem opens

with a wedding occasion amidst jocundity in a jolly hall. Rekha‘s wedding today. Rekha

is a colleague of Laxmi, junior by ten years. Laxmi is in two minds--to be or not to be in

the wedding hall. Why is Laxmi so shaky to join a wedding ceremony? At the wedding

hall Laxmi meets her colleagues. Laxmi is single at thirty three. Why is she not married

yet? Is she very ugly to look at? No. She looks very handsome. She is a lamp to any

house. Of course plenty of proposals appeared with tea before many young men. Laxmi

tells the poet

None complained my looks.

―What‘s the dowry?‖ (―Laxmi‘s Plea‖ 30)

And there ends all her hopes. Let us hear from Laxmi herself:

Father died when I was ten;

mother bed-ridden with cancer;

a thatched house in five cents,

an elder sister married off.

My meagre salary two thousand

hardly meets our food and medicine.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Leave me alone;

leave me single. (―Laxmi‘s Plea‖ 30)

Aside the poet murmurs:

A lamp destined to burn out (―Laxmi‘s Plea‖ 30)

Look at the woman in the slum. Mother is bed ridden. Drunken husband will come at

night to resume beats and kicks. (―What a Birth‖ 42) Dominic excels in dramatic lyrics.

Earlier men and women worked together in the field. Capitalism drove the women to the

kitchen from outdoor. Men rule in the world outdoor. Now women are also trying to have

a space outdoor. Better late than never. And there is a woman who is sitting for an

examination to wrest a place outdoor for survival. She is a married woman. She has a

child. Sitting in the examination hall she can hear the cry of her child for the breast milk.

What shall the woman do? What shall the mother do? Will she leave the examination hall

to breastfeed the child or will she continue in the examination hall for two more hours?


(―Cry of my Child‖ 55) Hamlet is the prince of Denmark. His father is dead mysteriously.

Whether he should probe into the death of his father is rather a question pertaining to the

intellect and his princely status and so on. But think of a mother sitting in an examination

hall hearing the call of her starved babe. True that she does not become the heroine of a

noble tragedy. But the to be or not to be of the mother is far more engrossing than the to

be or not to be of Hamlet. It involves not only the questions of economic security, it

involves two throbbing bodies--one of the young mother, another of the little baby and

they throw up life and death questions more immediate than those of Hamlet and more

real than those of Hamlet to us the ordinary men. Dominic seems to have opened fresh

pastures of poetry never attempted before in prose or rhyme.

And think of the girl child that is pining for her mother‘s breast. The poet smiles at the

infant on her mother‘s shoulder. But the baby does not smile back. Her mother‘s

appearance foretells the infant‘s lot.

Born to poor parents,

how thorny would be

the path of her life!

She is yet to toddle;

But I (the poet) could vision

the blood oozing from

her soft feet. (―Musings from an Infant‘s Face‖ 115)

With the poet the gory future of the infant is in the present.

Being a female,

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

abuses and tortures,

will come in battalions

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Lame and tottering

she will struggle along

till she reaches

her terminus, death. (―Musings from an Infant‘s Face‖ 115-116)

It is not the fatal flaw nor the Nemesis that is responsible for the doom of these human

children. Thanks to the inequality in the society, poverty makes Everywoman heroic!

Thanks to the food technology, artificial food:

Parents are very sad,

for little daughter has period:

hormonic chicken daily food. (―Nature Weeps‖ 119)

And there is another pen-picture of a woman‘s heroic struggle for survival:

All eyes were fixed on the sky.

A woman on a tall thorny tree;

sharp spines covering

trunk, branches and twigs.


Standing on a bamboo ladder,

a score feet high,

shaming men she‘s

felling thorny branches;

support trees for pepper cuttings.

When few men risk

such hazardous labour,

necessity goaded her

to fight against fate. (―Resolution‖ 120)

The reader wonders who is responsible for the fate of the like of her. In heroic poetry

and romances and tragedies we have seen people going off to death in an attitude;

beautiful ladies and fat bellied beaus looking upon them from the veranda. Life is really

thrilling for those who act its glory and for those who see its romance. But they pale

beside the real battles of life as waged by the lady climbing the thorny tree. Is there

anyone among us the readers who cries ―To arms, to arms, to war against a sea of

troubles?‖ Dominic is one of those few poets who transports the readers to the melting

mood.

Aeschylus wrote seventy to ninety tragedies. Seven tragedies of Sophocles survive out

of 100 plays. Some 19 plays of Euripides survive. The tragedies written by Corneille or

by Racine or by Shakespeare do pale before the tragedies composed by the capitalist

system and the real life. Dominic‘s poetry drives us out from the cinema hall to witness

what life is like. The mirror cracks from side to side. The glass house is shattered with

thundering bang. Is there any Red Cross knight Sir Lancelot to take up our cause?

The part three of the poem ―Multicultural Harmony‖ sums up the predicament of

women in India:

Her birth is an ill omen

Millions are butchered

before they are born

Parents receive her

as burden to family (―Multicultural Harmony‖ 151)

Her brother is sent for school. But she must spend her life in the kitchen. She must live

on the left over of her brother after her brother eats. She cannot choose her spouse. Often

she is raped by her husband.

Feeding of children

falls on her shoulders

Sacrifices her health

for entire family

Her struggle starts

from early morning

fights with utensils

in the kitchen

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .


She is born with a cry

goes on crying and crying

till she reaches

her destination death. (―Multicultural Harmony‖ 152)

Dominic finds women exploited everywhere--in families, institutions, societies,

nations, politics and religion. Dominic asks:

Why can‘t women be priests

in churches, mosques and temples? (―Multicultural Harmony‖ 152)

Dominic observes that such discrimination between male and female does not exist

among the animals. If equality were the criterion of civilization, are not animals more

civilized than men? We men look upon women as commodity. We look at them with

lascivious eyes as if we go about window shopping.

The Economics of the Poet

My learned fellow readers, some of them, may have been bored with my exegesis of

Dominic‘s poetry as it is the exegesis of statement poetry. Statement poetry always tries

to say something beyond a poetic theme or motif. In other words my learned fellow

readers who have worked hard in the laboratory of literature and literary criticism may be

apparently disappointed with Dominic because there is neither symbolism nor surrealism

nor other tropes of poetic art. But one wonders whether there could be language at all

without symbols and symbolism. Symbol according to Peirce is a sign where the sign

relates to its object alone by means of convention. Well the married Bengalee women put

on vermilion on the parting of hair. Vermilion on the parting of the hair is a symbol. Let

us recall ―Resolution‖

All eyes were fixed on the sky,

A woman on a tall thorny tree;

sharp spines covering

trunk, branches, twigs

Standing on a bamboo ladder,

a score feet high,

shaming men she‘s

felling thorny branches; (―Resolution‖ 120)

This is clear representation of a woman climbing a tree for earning bread. But is not

the tree, the tree of life and hence thorny? Thus the thorny tree is a symbol. And of course

the poem could be read as a symbolist one that evokes horror in our minds.

An Elegy on My Ma gives us a vivid pen-picture of a mother working in the farm

making the field fertile with gallons of sweat. The mother is the mother of civilization

who laboured hard and taught men to cultivate. She is the symbol of the right economic

activity—cultivation being the only economic activity.

In every production of new wealth some amount of wealth is destroyed out of

necessity. The wealth destroyed must be subtracted from the wealth produced. The


difference is net wealth produced. If the new wealth is in excess of the destroyed wealth,

the excess should be deemed as net increase in wealth or net product. The physiocrats

rightly observed that net product was confined to one class of production namely

agriculture. Do away with the pollution the agriculturist produces more than what he or

she produces. What other class of producers do is to transfer or to replace the product of

agriculture. Neither the manufacturer produces anything of worth. What he does is to

combine or modify the raw material. Industry is sterile. It does not produce any extra

wealth.

True that industry and commerce might bring more gains than the production of food

grains. But gains are gained and not produced. Two horses and two asses are not four but

two horses and two asses. GDP earned from agriculture and GDP earned from

entertainment industry should not be classed together to compute the GDP. Think of the

world without food. Can the entertainment industry continue even for a day? Can Lata

Mangeshkar sing anymore? Agriculture does possess the power of sustaining and

creating forces of life, whether vegetable or animal. The fruits of the earth are given by

God while the products of arts are wrought by man who is powerless to create (A History

of Economic Doctrines by Charles Gide and others translated by R Richards George G

Harrap, London, 1949, page 34) The agriculturists need house to live in, clothes to wear,

and implements for cultivation. So the agriculturist must give the artisan and the weaver

some portion of net product as remuneration. In other words industries should be there

only to give fillip to agriculture.

However much we pride in industries you will not find common people—the masses

celebrating the production of cars or ships. All over the globe harvest festivals are

observed. This shows that the collective mind of the humanity is bent on farming and

producing more food. Onam is a harvest festival. That is the natural order as posited by

the physiocrats and this is revealed to every man through intuition, the light that lighteth

every man that cometh to the world. Nowadays people are drawn to other occupations

than farming. But the object of vocational education should be to reinforce agriculture.

Once the food production is achieved, all students of vocational education are merry.

That is what Dominic observes in ―Harvest Feast.‖

Those little people of Kozhikode,

avidly feasting on rice and payasam;

The harvest banquet of their sweated labour.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

a lesson too to the adult world: (―Harvest Feast‖ 19)

No, Dominic does not praise the labourers at Bhaba Atomic Research Institute. In his

red salute or ―Lal Salaam to Labourers‖ the poet salutes the labourers who are backbone

of the country:

They sow the seed;

reap the corn;

and we eat and sleep.


They spin and weave;

make beautiful clothes;

and we wear and ‗shine.‘

They build houses

where they never rest,

and there we live and snore.

They sweat in factories;

produce numberless goods;

and we use and enjoy. (―Lal salaam to Labourers‖ 28)

But it is a pity that these labourers are ill paid. Dominic observes:

Let us not be stingy

when we pay them wages,

for we can‘t do what they do. (―Lal salaam to Labourers‖ 28)

And once again we must invoke the physiocrats on this issue. They assert that the

equivalent of the annual expenses of the peasant and labourer should be borne. In this

context the French philosopher Abbé Baudeau should be quoted elaborately:

I say it boldly, cursed be every proprietor sovereign and emperor that puts all the

burden upon the peasant and the land which gives all of us our sustenance... and

that he who ennobles them furthers their comfort or leisure increases their output

of wealth which after all the one source of wealth for every class in the society. (A

History of Economic Doctrines by Charles Gide and others translated by R

Richards George G Harrap, London, 1949, page 44)

Dominic exhorts:

Give them at least their due;

the more we give, the more we get;

Put charity in humanity

a spiritual bliss that never dies. (―Lal salaam to Labourers‖ 29)

This is the economics of charity in Dominic style. Which is more important, diamond

or water? Dear economists, the utility of water is untold. But the utility of diamond is

mainly for fashion parade. And since water and oxygen are in plenty and since diamond

is scarce you decide the mining of diamonds as valuable production. How foolish you

are! You do not know how much water and environment is being polluted. You do not

know how to compute this degradation of the environment.

Dominic exclaims:

Water, the source of life;

Omnipresent and abundant

like its parent oxygen.

Free and ‗insignificant‘


for millions;

going to be more precious

than gold and diamond. (―Water, Water, Everywhere . . .‖, 133)

Oxygen is the parent of water. This speaks of myth making power of Dominic that

reminds of the myth making power of Shelley as evident in ―The Cloud.‖ In ancient

Sanskrit and in ancient German the poet and prophet are one, vates or kavih. The way

water is being polluted, in times to come water will be scarcer than diamonds. The

economist and their mentors are idiots and the agents of ignorance representing the moon

of ignorance hiding the Sun of wisdom. Coleridge in the context of a narrative depicting a

sea voyage observes during a particular situation: ―Water water everywhere but not a

drop to drink.‖ The earlier narrator forges a myth. But the later poet Dominic represents it

as a symbol. Water is the source of life. Water or the compassion of God is everywhere.

But we have been blinded by the elite of the society. Because of our ignorance we cannot

derive our sustenance from the gift of Nature and we grow spectre thin on the edge of

death in life. We have been blinded by the elite. They impart false education. They tell us

that diamond is more valuable than water; the overhead is more valuable than the real

commodity which has been produced. Consequently

Education makes them crazy of

White-collared cosy jobs

Fertile arable lands and fields

lie like deserted waste land (―Multicultural Kerala‖ 161)

This is not all. The land is being debased.

Construction mania devours

paddy fields and arable lands

and defecate multi-storeyed structures

on mother-earth‘s lovely bosom (―Multicultural Kerala‖ 161)

If you disfigure mother earth‘s lovely bosom with built space why should I not call it

discharge of faeces of civilization? Think of the happenings at Singur in West Bengal.

Fertile land that gives crops thrice a year was given away to Tata the industrialist for

manufacturing nano cars by the communist State government. Was it not sacrilege? Was

it not disfiguring the mother‘s breast? Was it not selling away your mother for money by

ungrateful children?

Chapter 3 - Pathos in the Poems

At the outset of our essays on Dominic we said that Dominic‘s poetry was engendered

by pity just as Valmiki‘s. Ayodhya was a paragon of a city in the contemporary. The city

was flanked between river Tamasa and Sarayu. While Sarayu comes from Lake Manasa,

a lake made in the image of Brahma, the creator is charged with sattvaguna. Tamasa

representing darkness was symbolic of Tamasika guna. While Valmiki was about to

bathe in the Tamasa he was shocked by a loud cry reverberating in the skies. It was the

cry of a female bird whose spouse was killed by the arrow of the hunter. My readers are

apt to ask: Where is the bird killed by the hunter? Where is the bereaved she bird? Where

is the hunter in Dominic‘s poems? Which is the arrow that killed the bird? Well land is

the bird disfigured by greed and technology. Water is the wounded bird marred and

defaced by dams. Let us now look at the human incarnations upon the heath.

Lance Naik B Sudheesh at Siachen army camp had planned to visit home on leave to

have a first glimpse of his darling daughter. Four month old daughter Meenakshi is

shown her father‘s frozen dead body. Meenakshi and her youthful mother are the she

bird. Sudheesh is the he bird killed by the hunter. The laments of the surviving bird shook

the skies and the earth and the poets Valmiki and Dominic.

What a depressing sobbing sight for mass assembled!

Tsunami of groans, laments, weeps and sighs! (―Tribute to Siachen Martyrs‖ 243)

Dominic describes the situation with telling power:

Alas neither of them identifies each other! (―Tribute to Siachen Martyrs‖ 243)

Meenakshi is not old enough to know her dad. Lifeless eyes of Sudheesh cannot see

his offspring. Dominic is a master of evoking pathos. To that end he often employs

sensory details in dramatic situation. Do we not see the child of Joson before our eyes

when Dominic addresses his dead friend Joson:

When your youngest kid,

not knowing what has happened,

kissed your face often

and plucked flowers

from your wreath;

tossed them to her sisters weeping and screaming

What a game He plays! (―In Memoriam George Joson‖ 1)

Dominic shows us more than he tells us.


On Tragic Lives of Children

Curiously enough the very bereaved child with which the K. V. Dominic Essential

Readings and Study Guide opens recurs at the end of the book and that is how the book

comes full circle. And does it not remind us of pity like a naked new born babe destined

to stride in the blast?

Our country is as it were the deflowered garden of a selfish giant where children are

killed, abused and sold. It is the country ruled by Herod and Kamsa where children

undergo mayhem:

Forty thousand children

Abducted in India every year!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

India bears three lakh child beggars!

Forty four thousand children

fall into gangs‘ clutches every year!

How can man be cruel like this! (―Child Trafficking‖ 224)

This is an instance of logos where arguments are put forward to persuade. Dominic

juxtaposes logos with pathos or appeal to the emotions and empathy of the readers.

A child beggar Anand looks at the little boys going to the school in uniform making a

joyful noise. But, nay all the earth does not break forth into joyous songs. Anand

remembers how like a vulture a car came. A bearded man with a black towel swooped

upon him, hushed his cries for help and pushed him into the car. And now he is begging.

Anand reflects:

Many months have passed

since I left my mummy, dad and Smitha

Are they still crying at my loss? (―Anand‘s Lot‖ 10)

Right at this moment:

―Bloody dog, why are you standing still?‖

The bearded-man slapped helpless Anand.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Crying, Anand stretched his hand

went begging shop after shop. (―Anand‘s Lot‖ 10)

Dominic is as competent in telling as in showing. The predicament of Anand has been

so vividly brought home to the readers that it seems to us that the same has been taken

from a leaf from the poet‘s own childhood.

Anand‘s lot is a leap into the well of life in death. And now think of Mahi‘s fate:

Mahi‘s fourth birthday

clad in new gaudy dress

celebrating with her friends

playing near the house at 11pm

fell into the hellish trap,

a deserted uncapped bore well

Pathos in the Poems 43

seventy feet deep (―Mahi‘s Fourth Birthday‖ 194)

The destiny of Mukesh is identical. He has fallen into the cavity of poverty unaware.

Born to impoverished Dalit parents

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mother bedridden with mouth cancer

Father, the bread earner

fell victim to acute asthma

Little Mukesh their lone support

Works in nearby estates

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

When his classmates enjoy holidays

his nimble feet and soft hands

clash with rough tools and hard earth (―Mukesh‘s Destiny‖ 192)

The little child cries for the breast milk of the mother (―Cry of my Child‖ 55). It is an

examination hall. May be Professor Dominic is the invigilator there. A mother hard

pressed by economic exigency is sitting for examination. The examination hall is sombre

and silent. But the hall is loud with the cries of the child that the mother alone can hear.

She does not know what to do. She feels the prick in her breast.

The creator Brahma blessed Valmiki and said that he would be able to perceive

everything visible and invisible associated with Rama. Valmiki‘s quest was for an ideal

man.

Similarly at the biddings of God the Father, the poet Dominic shows the world God‘s

grand concert in:

. . . matter and spirit

animate and inanimate

visible and invisible

tangible and intangible

audible and inaudible (―Multicultural Harmony‖ 149)

In short the world system is as it were the theme of the poetry of Dominic.

On Hardships and Tears of Youth

Let us return to the theme of children in Dominic x-raying the dysfunctions in the

world system. A little earlier we were at an examination hall. Now let us visit a school:

A boy in tears stand on the verandah;

A punishment for not wearing his tie!

In the humid weather of forty degree

a slavish mimic, a legacy of West. (―A Nightmare‖ 6)

Why does Rahul stand outside the class in tears?

Couldn‘t study

yesterday‘s portion.

Whose fault?


Drunken father

beat mother,

beat Rahul;

kicked away supper,

none could sleep.

Cruel father,

Cruel teacher,

Cruel world,

Poor Rahul

longs for love. (―Rahul‘s World‖ 39)

Elsewhere:

The child is reluctant

to go to school:

teacher welcomes with cane (―Nature Weeps‖ 117)

This is the real cause for dropouts in the schools. Primary level dropouts in Nagaland

is 19.4 percent, Manipur 18 percent, Mizoram 13 percent and so on according to Smriti

Irani, erstwhile education minister (indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/drop-outs-in-

north-east-india/1/0660697.html). But this is a white lie. The number of dropouts in

schools in India is staggering.

Not only women and children but young men and old suffer from severe wounds. Let

us accompany Dominic to the liquor shop.

Blind old man

weak and bony

leaning on staff

holding lottery tickets (―Lottery Tickets Sellers‖ 193)

Now let us to go to the bus stand.

Similar sight of a ticket seller

a youth who has lost

both his hands

pleads for commuters‘ mercy

in buses after buses

with tickets and money

hanging in two pockets (―Lottery Tickets Sellers‖ 193)

These are visuals made of words. They remind us of the scream by the expressionist

painter Edward Munch. Edward Munch makes visual art audible. We can hear the

scream. Dominic makes verbal art visible before the eyes. For oft when we lie and loll

lonely on our cozy cot in fine and dandy mood these ugly sights flash upon our inward

eye which are the curses of solitude.

Pathos in the Poems 45

Nothing tangible is ugly with Dominic‘s aesthetics. He beholds God‘s beauty in all

forms. He finds manifestation of Him in the face of Poppy the cat. But man distinguishes

between the beautiful and the ugly. A little girl asks:

Ma, why didn‘t God create me a little more beautiful? (―Beauty‖ 12)

The mother in Dominic responds:

Who told you dear that you are not beautiful? (―Beauty‖ 12)

And Dominic asks:

When will ―crow crow‖ be

Pleasing as ―koo-koo‖?

When will the Black be

kindred to the White?

When will the Black and the White

dwell in the same house

and dine from the same plate? (―Crow, the Black Beauty‖ 105)

This is reminiscent of William Blake and Songs of Experience.

Apartheid is unnatural and goes against the system of God. True that God has created

difference between the snake and the dove.

The Rig Vedas imagine that at the beginning of the beginningless there was the

cosmic Purusha with thousand heads, thousand hands, thousand legs. And he sacrificed

himself. From his head the Brahmins sprang. From his hands the Kshatryas or the

warriors sprang. From his thighs the Vaisyas sprang and from his feet the Sudras sprang.

The Brahmins had innate aptitude to sacrifice themselves for the wellbeing of the world.

The Kshatryas had the inclination to rescue man from physical assaults. The Vaisyas had

innate leaning for exchange of wealth and the Sudras had innate inclination for service.

True that nowadays servants assume Masters, the elephants dictate the Mahut. May be

the Brahmins are no longer selfless or sattvika. May be the caste system implies station

and duties. May be caste system has relevance even today. But does it necessarily mean

that Prakash Jaadav aged thirty one riding a motorcycle should be attacked by a group of

twelve. He is beaten and his nose is slashed.

The reason for this diabolic act?

―The Dalits have no right to ride motorbikes

in presence of high caste men.‖ (―Caste Lunatics‖ 169)

On Man’s Selfishness and Vices

With Dominic nothing is hateful in God‘s creation. God says:

Rhythm is there

in your breath;

your heartbeats;

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .


your chew

and munch;

. . . . . . . . . . .

and even

your flatus. (―Write My Son, Write‖ 76)

No word is profane for Dominic. While

Birds and animals play

their assonant keys.

Man alone strikes

discordant notes.

. . . . . . . . . . .

It‘s your pettiness,

viewing things

in different ways,

thinking in opposites;

good and bad,

beautiful and ugly. (―Write My Son, Write‖ 76-77)

In the self-same way, the humanity is divided into haves and have-nots--man made

categories.

never in creator‘s dream.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

When millions die of hunger,

thousands compete for delicacies.

What justice is there for the minority

to starve the majority to death? (―Haves and Have-nots‖ 20)

What is a country but her people? A country is not its building or its airports or dams.

Our ailing country is visible through her wounded people.

Think of the flower vendor who sells flowers to deck marriage parties and banquet

halls. But his own daughter remains unmarried because he cannot afford dowry to the

prospective suitor. Love is not love when it is mingled with some other consideration

than love. The flower vendor‘s dear wife is bedridden with cancer (―Flower Vendor‖

226).

Chapter 4 - Criticism on Government’s Claims and

Promises

Indeed India is number one in the world. But in what aspect?

Ninety seven percent of my countrymen

have no access to clean drinking water.

Yet the government claims

the country is fast growing!

True, growth is there

in numbers of multi-millionaires

who are even less than two-percent. (―India Number One‖ 166)

Who denies the:

Rocketing growth of India!

Overtaking America,

surpassing Europe,

competing with China? (―Rocketing Growth of India!‖121)

But:

Statistics never fails.

First in population growth;

first in number of poor;

top in ignorance and illiteracy;

top in superstition and fundamentalism;

very low standard of living.

Rocketing growth of the rich;

express growth of the poor; (―Rocketing Growth of India!‖121)

On Family

Family is one of the legitimations of Dominic‘s poetry. In a developing country like

India, family is as it were the greatest casualty. From every cottage wails and laments

blow and tears flow unimpeded. Scanty light on the road brings about the car accident of

Joson and his children and wife weep. A mortal cavity on the road kills Mahi a four years

old and her parents scream. In a gaudy mansion an old man and his wife mourn for their

children who are away. Our country cannot give gainful employment to her sons and

daughters. Now let‘s look at the case of slums:

Not far away were the slums of the city;


three generations lived in each hut;

grandpa, grandma, their sons and their wives,

and their little kids sleep in a room! (―A Nightmare‖ 7)

Lakshmi cannot get married because she cannot afford the required dowry. She says:

Father died when I was ten,

mother bed-ridden with cancer;

a thatched house in five cents;

an elder sister married off;

My meagre salary two thousand

hardly meets our food and medicine. (―Laxmi‘s Plea‖ 30)

Look into Rahul‘s family:

Drunken father

beat mother,

beat Rahul;

kicked away supper,

none could sleep. (―Rahul‘s World‖ 39)

What a birth we Indians have:

Just returned

from the furnace

after the tarring work.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Drunkard husband

will come at night

to resume beats and kicks.

Dawn for doom

Dusk to damn

What a birth! (―What a Birth‖ 42)

Rejected by relatives, neighbours and society, Chellamma, widow, childless, weak and

homeless, counts down minutes and waits. The alien Death will arrive in train. (―For the

Glory of God‖ 108)

Lo there is a lady whose husband has eloped with a harlot leaving her three daughters.

She has father and mother bedridden. She climbs a tall thorny tree to earn her bread.

(―Resolution‖ 120)

Are not these shattered families the basic constituent of the society that is developing

India? Teresa sweeps classrooms, veranda, campus. Her husband is bedridden, paralyzed

by accident; two little daughters in primary school; life in a rented hut; debts to

neighbours. She is in tears when she gets her one year salary because she must give it

away to the manager. It is a forced donation (―Teresa‘s Tears‖ 124).

On the bureaucracy of India Dominic writes:

In democratic government

Criticism on Government’s Claims and Promises 49

people are masters and

bureaucrats servants

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Masters request servants

―Sir, what shall I do for you?‖

It‘s our curse here

bribes and graft rule service (―Servants Assume Masters‖ 241)

So a country is neither tall buildings nor banquet halls but her people. And we have

already surveyed the people of India through the eyes of Dominic. No better and truthful

portrait of India could be gleaned anywhere in modern Indian English poetry. Their

economy, their family, their housing, their economic activity that includes begging, have

been depicted from firsthand experience. They are the wounded bird.

On Hunger and Poverty

Curiously enough India is a welfare state. Hunger led thousands to swarm at an

Ashram and there was a stampede. Sixty three women and children died. Many were

injured and hospitalized.

PM announced ex gratia

of two lakhs each for the dead; (―Rocketing Growth of India!‖ 121)

Dominic‘s comments are being identified with the readers:

Had the government granted

half the amount when they were alive;

had the government shown half the love

they shower to the rich, (―Rocketing Growth of India!‖ 122)

Let us visit a Tsunami camp led by Dominic:

Months have passed

since Tsunami tossed them from their houses.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Government gave kits and boxes;

kits don‘t contain essential things;

hearth produces smoke than flames.

None hears their cries and complains:

―Where have gone the crores

collected for their relief?‖ (―Tsunami Camps‖ 17)

The government is indifferent to these helpless people that when these half fed, ill

housed, deprived from clean water, men cried:

―Give us boats and nets,

and we will earn our livelihood.‖

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

not even gods listen to their cries. (―Tsunami Camps‖ 17)


Now dear readers with your leave may we take the liberty to peep into the pompous

state of affairs of the rich two percent of the country.

There is a mother who exhorts her child not to eat more than what he needs and must

not waste his food. The mother says:

Dear, you don‘t realize

the price of your leavings;

it can save

a child like you

from his death today. (―Hungry Mouths‖ 181)

The little child speaks in response:

―Very very sorry Ma

I will never waste

any food in future.

Ma, we shall keep

a portion of our food

and send it to

those hungry mouths.‖ (―Hungry Mouths‖ 181)

But such angels of a rich mother and a son are rare in our country.

Dominic tells us:

I could view the cry of an obese boy

whose mother was beating him to eat more.

A cry of a different note was heard from the next door,

where a bony child was crying for a crumb.

A lavish wedding feast was served in the town hall,

rich delicacies heaped on the plates,

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I could see two ragged girls outside,

struggling with the dogs in the garbage bin. (―A Nightmare‖ 6)

The contrast of black and white brings both the colours pronounced. To use contrast

and antithesis is one of the most effective devices of Dominic‘s poetry to reveal the

difference between the rich two percent and the starving masses in clear terms.

The landless poor migrate to work on landowner‘s vast farm in exchange for paddy

grains. No wages but one by twelfth of the harvest that too deducting the food they eat.

This landowner belongs to the two percent affluent. 8th

January 2013, the hired truck

carrying sacks of grain they earned swerved and overturned. Twenty five labourers and

ten children died suffocated under heavy sacks. The grains for which they struggled hard-

-the grains in heavy sacks fell on them and led them to their graves. These are the ironies

of life. No one, neither the landowner nor the government came to help their bereaved

families (―Why is Fate So Cruel to the Poor?‖ 204).

Criticism on Government’s Claims and Promises 51

On Fake Development

Perhaps development could rescue the masses grovelling in the dark in hunger and

pain:

Proposed Aranmula International Airport

A dream project of private construction group

Intends to construct airport city in 3000 acres

Eighty percent land paddy fields and wet lands

Rice and fish can earn four hundred crores per year

Runway being constructed over tributary of Pamba

Will lead to flood in river during monsoon

Razing of four hills for filling wet lands

Leading to water shortage and loss of biodiversity

Will affect serenity and sanctity of Parthasarathy temple

Three thousand poor families to be evicted

But they are not willing to leave

their sustaining lands, jobs and houses (―An Airport Made of Tears‖ 221)

The government and the corporate houses are in league to hasten development of our

country at all costs. Let thousands be evicted from their homes. Let nature be maimed but

development cannot stop. Who will benefit thereof? Why? The rich, two percent.

Truth is bitter and cruel. But Dominic is wedded to truth. The wings of the Pegasus of

his poesy are cropped off. He makes us come out of our glass houses and carries us

across the heath hewn into hell by the magic wands of development.

Urbanisation is sine qua non with development. Cities are the centres of economic

activity. Money flows there with greater force than in villages. And surely the poor

among the villagers throng into the golden cities of their imagination to conquer gold.

And what happens?

the city dwellers--

Busy and selfish.

devoid of humanity

Each one lost

in his own island. (―City Versus Village‖ 54)

Some neighbour is dead. The poet‘s wife asks the poet to go and seek. The dirge is

however from a close house. Though nearby a hundred meters the poet and his wife never

visited the house. The residents of the neighbouring house also never visited the poet.

How can I go there? In contrast a village is an extended family where harmony and love

rule. With the poet the villagers are fooled and cheated and looted by townsmen. In fact

whatever surplus is created in the villages is invested in towns only.

During summer the poet lies in his concrete house fighting against the manmade heat

and the dreary sound of the hot wave fan. On the other hand, cuckoo lies on his God

given bed caressed by the gentle breeze, lulled by the nocturnal music. It has a sound and

carefree sleep (―Sleepless Nights‖ 40). So this is how city life deprives man of the gifts of

God.


So as civilization progresses, poetry declines. As development accelerates every man

is caged and cabined, banished from the larger community of men.

The poet strikes a humorous note in his poem ―Sail of Life.‖ His morning walk takes

him to a tea stall. He is really astonished by the din and bustle that comes out from all

open stalls in the evening. The poet says:

My boisterous sail will reach

its harbour one day

I will be astonished

by its stillness and darkness. (―Sail of Life‖ 187)

The humour here reminds one of Chaucer. Chaucer during his journey to the house of

fame on the wings of an eagle through the blue deep pined for the muddy roads of

London to which he was used.

Chapter 5 - Surrealism in the Poetry

On another level if stillness and darkness were the signifiers of death, then, is not a

city where everyone is an island a metaphor of a hecatomb? True that when men are

separated from each other cabin and caged, the dogs mingle with their kind and the crows

often gather in spontaneous seminars where everybody has the right to caw. Thus

development is the hunter, urbanization is the hunter, their child hunger is writ large on

the faces of the majority of the Indians. But this is not all. In other countries also hunger

walks like a demon. In Zimbabwe the carcass of a wild elephant consumed in ninety

minutes by avid famished men and women and children. The poet adds that even the

skeleton was axed to support sinking life with soup (―Hunger‘s Call‖ 112). This

grotesque scene of famished people eating up an elephant could constitute a surrealist

drama in the developed countries. But what is surrealistic in the developed countries

could be real in many parts of the world. The grotesque site of an elephant being eaten up

by men lulls our conscious mind so that the message enters into our subconscious and

redeems our beings. Thus Dominic is a surrealistic poet par excellence when occasion

demands.

On Docupoetry

Mara in battle array accompanied by his friends and impish children, countless in

number, attacked Lord Buddha when he was seated below the peepul tree determined to

attain enlightenment. Humanity is in a similar predicament attacked by the forces of

development, globalization, casteism, communalism, terrorism, hunger and many others

in the trail. They could be characters in the Morality plays. They incarnate in the shape of

real situations in the docupoetry of Dominic. Yes just as plays composed by Hocchuth,

Kipphardt and Peterweiss composed docudrama which has unswerving fidelity to history.

Dominic‘s poetry should be called docupoetry because of its wonderful veracity as to the

real shape of things in India and the world.

Now let us look at communalism as a hunter. There was a college teacher in Kerala,

TJ who set a question paper in which certain questions were asked in the form of

dialogue for marking punctuation. The quoted passage was in the approved and

prescribed text book taught in the college. It hurt the sentiments of a few fanatics of a

particular community. The fanatics set up its own court and in obedience to the dictates

of the court, some miscreants of the community hacked off right palm of the professor. It

was picked up by his sister and in the hospital stitched to like a dry branch budded to a

live plant. They axed his left leg from thigh to toes. They cut three fingers and bones of

left palm. Any reader can visualize the live figure of the maimed professor. It is more


fearsome than Banquo‘s ghost. Neither Kyd nor Seneca could portray such figures. Facts

are stranger than fiction. The image of TJ maimed and mutilated reminds us of the

aesthetics of cruelty as propounded by Antonin Artaud. That benumbs our conscious

mind and reason so that truth could be thrust into our being like a naked dagger.

But this is not all. TJ was suspended and dismissed by the college he served. Perhaps

that is why Dominic exclaims:

India, my independent country!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Largest secular state!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Where is freedom of speech

and expression? (―To My Colleague‖ 126)

Dominic is not satisfied with the delineation of the assault on the professor. He

describes the untold suffering of the professor. He was bedridden for forty three days

Physical pains playing like concert;

added by arrows darted by all sides: (―To My Colleague‖ 126)

Such a pulsating description of pain racking the body and the body suffering the same-

-a visual imagery and kinesthetic has never been put in words before.

On Violence, Terrorism and War

How about the world war-torn and jealousy-torn? Dominic exclaims:

I wish I had the claws of a vulture

to fetch the skeletons from Iraq

and build a bone-palace

to imprison Bush in it.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I wish I were a bullet

and shoot into the heart of the terrorist

who compels the teen age boy

to explode and kill that innocent mob. (―A Blissful Voyage‖ 5)

Just look at the grinning face of Dominic on the back cover of the book Essential

Readings and Study Guide. It has the love and innocence of a child. Until and unless ye

be like children ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. Is such a tender face capable

of such anger that it could become a bullet into the heart of a tyrant or a terrorist?

A train blast takes place. A hundred and fifty die. All innocents set out for nearby

destination end at eternal terminus (―Train Blast‖ 128). Dominic informs us: ―Another

heinous act / of Maoists.‖ They should be cursed as Ashwatthama was cursed.

Ashwatthama killed the innocent children of the Pandavas. Just as God the Father cursed

Cain, so was Ashwatthama cursed to live evermore and wander in the forest friendless

homeless all alone. We have already named a few forces that are working to bring about

misfortunes upon mankind and especially upon the sons of our dear mother India.

Surrealism in the Poetry 55

Politics, religion are surely responsible for them but above all ignorance and economics

initiating mankind with the mantras of development are the think tanks behind the

architects of these misfortunes. It is their teachings that conjure war.

Well war is a judgment, says Dorothy L Sayers, that overtakes societies when they

have been living upon ideas that conflict too violently with laws governing the universe...

Never think that wars are irrational catastrophes; they happen when wrong ways of

thinking and living bring about intolerable situations (Quoted from E. F. Schumacher,

Small is Beautiful, Rupa and Co, Calcutta, 1974, page 30) Does not Sayers statement

liken poetry? And does not Dominic speak like an economist when he the poet addresses

us, man and posits:

My dear fellow beings

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The entire system

is a grand concert

composed by the Solespirit

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

visible and invisible

tangible and intangible

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

are instruments multitudinous

of His perfect symphony. (―Multicultural Harmony‖ 149)

Dominic elsewhere speaks in the parole of God the Father:

None else shudder

when I speak

through thunder. (―Write My Son, Write‖ 82)

Elsewhere:

Lightning and thunder

God‘s fireworks

Frightened man quirks! (―Nature‘s Bounties‖ 33)

And yes, God sometimes speaks through thunder when the system of universe is

jarred. What impels God the Father to speak through thunder? Karl Marx has been

prophetic. He told that culture is the superstructure and economic forces constitute its

substructure. We do not know whether the titanic economist Keynes said with sarcasm or

not, but the fact remains that he counseled that economic progress could be only achieved

if we employ those powerful drives of selfishness that goes against the tenets of religion.

(Quoted from E F Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, Rupa and Co, Calcutta, 1974, page 24)

Laws of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam

eternal laws of the planet

Meant for humans and nonhumans

But rational human beings never care (―Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam‖ 245)


Economists, the prophets of market economy sound the drum of competition that will

have no ending. Systematic cultivation of greed and envy through the agency of

politicians and religion and economics drive men to war. The drum that goads us to

competition turns into war drums.

There is no participation of the common people in war. Dominic avows that man is not

born with innate propensity for war.

Aren‘t the masses peace lovers,

benevolent and compassionate? (―Martyrs at the Borders‖ 198)

Love for the family, love for the village, love for the State where they inhabit, love for

the nation/country are alright. But they do not support war between countries.

More than two thousand soldiers

sacrificed their precious lives for India and Pakistan

While hundred and fifty crores of people

cosily sleep with family in both the countries

(―Tribute to Siachen Martyrs‖ 243)

No this is not indifference of the masses to the patriots of the country.

People aren‘t iron-hearted to see their patriots

suffer so sorely and sacrifice their precious lives


When wars are but fabricated by the whoppers of the politicians people are uncaring.

War drains away lot of human resource. Children lose their father. Wives lose their

husbands. Parents lose their sons. Besides militarization of economy drains away the

wealth of the country:

When thousands die of hunger everyday on either side

hundreds millions are spent on this vulnerable place


Dominic does not lament merely for the wastage of money in the country‘s defence.

The demonstration of fire power at the desert of Pokhran – Vayushakti 2010 may have

raised the approbation of the whole nation including President, Defence Minister and so

on. Proud moments for all of them, but Dominic shudders at the sight:

But for me a horrible sight.

The dropping of each missile,

an explosion in my heart.

My mind can‘t conciliate

though only a parade.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

One day or other

my sisters and brothers

in Pakistan and China

will be burnt with such missiles. (―IAF Vayu Shakti 2010‖ 113)


Aristotle, as we have already observed, speaks of three kinds of persuasion in ethos,

logos and pathos. And this is an instance of ethos.

War Dominic points out is a ploy of the politicians to divert the attention of the people

and to muffle the protests of the masses against rampant corruption. And to that end they

spend billions in defence.

Total money spent on defence

can wipe out poverty from the planet for ever

(―Martyrs at the Borders‖ 198

Military camp and war at Siachen, highest battle field in the world, is not war between

two countries but war against nature. The avalanches there are mortally wounded. It is the

selfish thoughts of a few people who devastate the system (―Siachen Tragedy‖ 156).

Mother India is the wounded bird as it were in her deathbed. Her own children, the

crafty politicians, shoot mortal arrows at her. The poet addresses Mother India:

Your politician sons suck your blood

Rape you and even attempt matricide

They shoot arrows and you lie bleeding

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

you are dying inch by inch day after day (―Mother India, I Weep…‖ 235)

On the Need of Harmonious Life with Nature

Nature is also causality. It is the wounded bird. When Joson‘s little child plucked

flowers from the wreath, it unconsciously signified that the beautiful things and tender

things are not required where there is a travesty of civilization. In this green world made

by man, a mallard becomes the mount of a poet. It is a pity that the present day

civilization has brought to reality the state of nature as portrayed by Hobbes in Leviathan.

In the face of the nascent jungle of civilization, man has to mutate into animals or else he

will not survive. The poet develops the claws of a vulture (―A Blissful Voyage‖ 5). The

poet mutates into a hawk (―A Nightmare‖ 6).

This is a queer world where somewhere the road overflows with black water streaming

from a tap. At another place a waterless tap laughs at the queue of women with empty

pitchers in their arms. This is how the civilization handles the resource of nature or the

gifts of God (―A Nightmare‖ 6).

How do we treat nature? Rather has nature anything to tell us men? A sheep tells us:

superior you boast

but inferior you become

to the microbes that kill you (―A Sheep‘s Wail‖ 8)

Indeed we cannot put up any resistance to the microorganisms, let antibiotics do

whatever they can. We plunder the fur from the skin of the sheep. We loot her milk. And

when she grows old we kill her to feast upon her flesh. The resources that are in the

nature should be preserved and protected with great care. But the civilization is marred. It

destroys its resources. The sheep posits that she is also created by God. Both man and


sheep are equal in God‘s eyes. True that man can kill her, but once she goes to heaven

she will plead against man before God. On the day of judgment man cannot appoint any

Palkiwala to plead for him.

Nature is one of the richest resources wherefrom men cull imagery in his day to day

conversation. When Anand was with his loving parents he would go school like a

butterfly. But when the car came to lift up, it came like a vulture (―Anand‘s Lot‖ 10).

Nature is the finest book wherefrom one could glean the truths of life. Bodily beauty

Dominic observes is only one among the beauties. It fades and decays as a flower does.

The impermanence of earthly beauty is underlined (―Beauty‖ 12).3

The dancing of the plant;

the smiling of the flower;

the chirping of the bird;

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

herald Life‘s march here. (―Connubial Bliss‖ 13)

The cuckoo cries;

―Wake up man and

sweat for your bread‖? (―Cuckoo Singing‖ 14)

If we could live in harmony with nature, our lives would have been as enjoyable as

those of angels in heaven. But it is a pity that while the Cuckoo sings and loves, man

exists sweating and moaning. When a man gets old and lonely, he likens a lily flower

drooping (―Gayatri‘s Solitude‖ 15). Earlier children ran like butterflies and caressed

plants and flowers (―Harvest Feast‖ 19).

Agriculture is the only art that gives man the joys of creativity. Nature is laid bare for

man to derive its sustenance from her. The little children plough the land, sow the seed,

pluck the weed, reap the corn, carry sheaves on their tender heads, thresh, husk, cook

(―Harvest Feast‖ 19).

Abundant Nature

feeds plants and animals,

Greedy selfish man disrupts

Mother Nature‘s feeding;

uproots millions of trees,

exterminates thousands of animals.

His deadly weapons

pose great threat

to life itself. (―Haves and Have-nots‖ 20)

Work Cited

Dominic, K. V. K. V. Dominic Essential Readings and Study Guide: Poems about Social

Justice, Womens’ Rights and the Environment. Edited by Victor R. Volkman.


World Voices Series. Ann Arbor: Modern History Press, 2016. (The page

numbers mentioned after quotes in this critical book is of this poetry collection)

Chapter 6 - Commentary on Selected Poems

Just as our mother, Mother India struggles for existence despite the attempts at

matricide by the intellectual children of hers. Similarly Nature is also wounded just as T J

was beaten by a band of fanatics, twelve of them. The sheep will lodge complaint against

man on the Day of Judgement. The mango tree exists through his service to man and

other creatures of God. He complains why man should cut him off. God the Father is

Himself fed up with complaints against man.

Nature out of its love suo motu offers measureless resources for man to survive. Even

the beautiful coconut tree gives us the model of architecture. The Dorian pillars were

modelled after trees. If man lives in communion with Nature he will be happy. Happiness

is heaven and heaven is happiness. Man does not realize this. He is destroying Nature.

The temperature of the world is waxing. Thanks to globalization and toxic smoke in the

air. Man axes the very branch on which he sits. He is committing suicide. A lady sans

husband and children and rejected by the society went to railroad to commit suicide. But

here is a fool who is amidst plenty and who is surrounded by his friend Nature who goes

to death in an attitude driven by the delusion that he is the arbitrary ruler of all that he

surveys. He is God as it were. But God is not an idiot like man. He is God because he is

never arbitrary. He is all love and compassion.

Earth herself groans. Dominic hears her groans. A school of modern scientists now

admit that the Earth is living. Consult the Gaia theory.

Now the question arises: how should we resist the suicidal attitude of man. Dominic

does not believe in a bloody war between haves and have-nots. Dominic‘s poems

constitute a picaresque novel where countless episodes figure. And it is a picturehouse of

numerous selfless or sattvika workers. He believes in the efficacy of karma. And maybe

he believes in the reincarnation of the soul. We must change the hearts of men with our

sattvika karma. We must save our environment and Nature with sattvika karma.

On a particular plane he believes in Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesvara, the principles of

creation, preservation and destruction that maintain the existence. But everywhere he sees

the light that was never on sea or land. He speaks of Brahman who is neither involved in

creation or preservation or destruction. He is the observer of his own activities or the

activities of the trinity Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesvara. If this be true, if everywhere

there is the master light, the light that was never on sea or land, that was ordained by God

then we might pin our faith in Dominic who tells us that eternal beauty can be achieved.

Om Shantih Shantih Shantih!


Explication of the poem “Siachen Tragedy”

Siachen glacier

milky white gray hair of Himalaya.

Seventy kilometres long

and height ranging from

four thousand and six thousand metres

Twinkling by sun, moon and stars

Rarest beauty on earth for the heavens

Winter, winter, winter, forever and ever

Snowfall is thirty five feet

temperature minus fifty Celsius

Not a blade of grass grows

yet world‘s highest battlefield!

Thousands of soldiers of India and Pakistan

fight with Nature to secure their frontiers

Billions are spent for their outposts

Siachen glacier feeding several rivers

irrationally axed and dug

Inviting vagaries of harmless Nature

Avalanche lodged on seventh April

buried hundred and twenty four soldiers

and eleven civilians under eighty feet snow

Isn‘t it high time the governments

stopped challenging benevolent Nature?

(K. V. Dominic Essential Readings, 156)

The poet‘s eyes move from earth to heaven and from heaven to earth and give locality

and name to ethereal nothing. True, Xanadu is a place name like that. But to make

Xanadu convincing Coleridge introduces Kubla Khan--In Xanadu did Kubla Khan…Well

Kubla Khan is a name which we know and yet we do not know much about him. Kubla

Khan stands for a twilight world where the wings of poesy can fly untrammelled. The

name Siachen has a name and a location in the real world. And despite that we know it

and yet we do not know it. It is also a twilight world fertile for poetry to flourish. In

Kubla Khan Coleridge gives us a vivid description of the course of the river Alph down

to the sunless sea. Here the poet‘s imagination gives a name and location of a fictitious

nothing that might stand for the course of life. But facts are stranger than fiction.

Dominic gives us a vivid true to life description of Siachen heights that are as strange and

romantic as the course of Alph made of fiction.

Siachen glacier

milky white gray hair of Himalaya

The Himalaya or the abode of snow is personified here true to the Indian tradition.

Himalaya is a god. The poet Kalidasa calls the Himalaya the king of mountains. And the

venerable king of the mountains has gray hair. It speaks of the antiquity of the Himalaya

Commentary on Selected Poems 63

and its wisdom. It is the ancient hill that, we surmise, Coleridge had in his mind in his

phrase—forests as ancient as the hills. The poem ―Siachen Tragedy‖ situates Siachen

glacier on the head of Himalaya. Siachen Glacier is located in the eastern Karakoram

range in the Himalaya Mountains. Think of Himalaya or the abode of snow. Vast

snowscapes of mountains or mountainscapes of snow are so different from our landscape

that our senses faint to describe them. They are what Kant calls sublime. They baffle our

imagination just as the sunless sea in Coleridge baffles our imagination. The poet

describes Siachen heights as ranging from four thousand to six thousand kilometres. And

the glacier is seventy kilometres long. And since it is near heaven, twinkling by sun,

moon and stars it is as it were a different plane of consciousness and a sight for gods to

see. Yes it is a different plane of consciousness where winter, winter, winter, ever and

ever where the madness fever and fret of our everyday world is frozen to inaction and

tranquillity. Siachen means the land littered with rose plants. Siachen is the sahasrara of

the Tellus as it were where thousand roses bloom. Coleridge did not give us the details of

the upper course of the river Alph. May be Dominic, a professor of English

unconsciously extrapolates the upper course of the river Alph through the depiction of the

Siachen Glacier. Here

Snowfall is thirty five feet

temperature minus fifty Celsius

Not a blade of grass grows

Is it not a savage place as holy and enchanted as ever beneath the sun and the moon

and stars which was haunted by the laments of a woman for her god lover?

While Alph stands for movement and the phenomenon of change Siachen heights

stand for perennial rest. While the river stands for ceaseless babbling the

Siachen/Himalayan heights stand for perpetual silence. Siachen/Himalayan heights

remind of the Mount Meru which is the centre of all physical, metaphysical and spiritual

universes. It is the abode of demigods far beyond the sphere of man. But nay, nothing is

static and at rest. Heraclitus comes to our mind--panta rei or everything changes. And

with Heraclitus a mountain is a waterfall in slow motion. Look at the Siachen glacier, as

if melted heaven slowly moves down the mountain to effect ablution of the earth.

But alas! Man today voyages to Mars and Moon. He climbs the mountain to reach the

heavens. Earlier there was no human habitation in the Siachen Glacier region. But now

army camps are situated at the Siachen heights and it is the highest battlefield in the

world where thousands of soldiers of India and Pakistan fight with Nature. Here nature

should be understood on two levels. When two men fight among themselves it is against

human nature and Nature. The Indian and the Pakistani soldiers fight there to secure their

frontiers.

At the same time they fight with the minus sixty degree Celsius to survive and they

fight against Nature. Glacial ice is being cut and melted with chemicals. Bio degradable

waste, use of arms, and ammunition have in no time turned a heaven upon earth into hell.

Shocked at human behaviour, the glacier has been retreating. Is it not funny that billions

of dollars are being spent to turn heaven into hell? Is that how science and civilization


transform the gifts of Nature only to add to the sufferings of man? The savage place holy

and enchanted that Coleridge knew is being defiled and desecrated and assaulted by man

quarrelling with his fellowmen. It seems as if civilization knows no peace. If ever these

civilized men reach heaven they will import war with their fellowmen there in the realm

of time honoured peace and bliss. Ha Ha! Often laughter is but tears in disguise! We do

not know whether Siachen tragedy fingers at the tragic predicament of Nature or the

tragic predicament of man dying in cold or dying fighting each other or the tragic

predicament of civilization. The poem is like the smile of Mona Lisa that baffles

interpretation!

Text and Explication of the Poem “Massacre of Cats”

My next door neighbours,

husband and wife,

pious to the core,

go every morning

to church for Mass:

offerings to God.

Went this morning,

offering delicious

fish fry to all our

cute cats:

fish fry mixed with

highly virulent toxin.

Offerings at home;

offerings at church.

One after other,

all the four died,



soft velvety fur

drenched in saliva

and excrement.

Heartbreaking carcasses

welled our eyes

and tears ran

like rivers.

With shaking hands,

dug a deep grave

and buried them.

The neighbours

celebrated the offer

peeping through

the window curtain.

How could they do this


demonic massacre?

They had complained,

the cats excreted

on their vast compound.

Cats always conceal

their excrement

with soil around.

Man has to learn a lot

from these humble beasts.

Where will

cats defecate?

Where will

all animals defecate?

Is this planet

man‘s sole property?

My materialist neighbours

go to church everyday;

read the Bible everyday;

but never read the part

to love other beings

as fellow beings.

Instead they believe,

other beings are

creations for their

service and taste.

God, instill in them

thy creation‘s purpose;

the need to love

other creations--

animals, plants

and the planet itself.

Kindly teach them

to learning to live

with the system.

Let my neighbours expiate,

dig out skeletons

of my cats;

tie them

to their necks

as Coleridge‘s

ancient mariner

did a century back

since he killed

the ominous albatross.

God, open the eyes


of all human beings

and show them

the flow of the universe

and make them all

as participatory beings. (K. V. Dominic Essential Readings . . . 94-96)

Dear Readers My head is today full of cats. I cannot get rid of them. Now you drive

them away from the mind. And lo! You can hear them mewing or roaring and

complaining from nowhere. Now you shut the call of the cats their carcasses flash upon

the mind. Do you know who has put cats in my mind? The poet, K. V. Dominic. Ha! Ha!

Dominic is a poet who writes about cats and cows.

Dear Readers may I take your leave most humbly to dwell on how Dominic has done

the mischief of putting cats in my head? Dominic has composed a poem entitled

Massacre of Cats. Ha! Ha! Is it not mock heroic? According to dictionary massacre

means an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of many people. The word massacre

reminds us of the massacre at My Lai in South Vietnam where between 347 and 500

civilians were killed. Such real stories chill our blood and freeze. But think of massacre

of cats. Unfortunate perhaps. But a little funny too.

But how did the massacre happen? May be some contagious disease infected them and

killed them. But no. The poem begins with a pious family--the poet‘s neighbour. How

lucky is the poet! Isn‘t it? To have a pious neighbour is a good fortune. At the very outset

the poet evokes our reverence for his neighbours. They are a pious couple--a husband and

a wife. When both husband and wife are pious there is a great flame of piety excelsioring.

What do they do impelled by their piousness? The poet says that they go every morning

to church for Mass offerings to God. The word Mass could mean different things to

different people. But when it is associated with church it could mean entire church

service in general.

With Catholics it is the source and summit of Christian life. Catholic Church believes

that Mass is exactly the same sacrifice that Jesus offered on the cross. Why did Jesus

offer his flesh and blood by way of being crucified? He did it to redeem every sentient

being in the eyes of God, the Father. During every Mass in the Church the Eucharist is

being enacted and re-enacted as it were verbally and through liturgy. The Miracle dramas

of yore still persist. The experience at a Mass cannot be described in language. It is as it

were an experience undergone during a swoon. The senses fail to describe it. And joining

a Mass one also feels like a Bodhisattva whose only end in life is to serve the sentient

beings and the so called inanimate things. And this Mass seems to be at the centre of the

narrative embodied in Massacre of Cats. So the indicators of the husband and wife of our

narrative as pious is proved by their regular attending of the Mass. This morning also

they went to the Church but presently before going to the Church they offered delicious

fish fry to all our cute cats. Mark the two lines-

Offerings at home;

offerings at church.


At the Church they will offer all their belongings to God the Father. At home they

offer fish to the cats. ―He prayeth best who loveth best all things great and small‖

(Coleridge). Once you love the slimy things angels appear and carry your boat across the

ocean of suffering. But what happens to the cats? Are they not mewing out of great

pleasure? That could be a possibility. But oh no. That possibility has been undone.

One after other,

all the four died,



soft velvety fur

drenched in saliva

and excrement.

Powerful word painting! We can see the cats dying. We are aware of their tender

beauty. Our sense of touch is evoked by the velvety fur and lo! These beautiful creatures

lie dead drenched in saliva and excretion. Those who have been killed in the wars or

battlefields are seldom described in such telling imagery. Poetry here is in pity. The poet

recalls how the heart breaking carcasses welled the eyes of the poet and his fellowmen.

Tears ran like rivers. What was there in the offering of the fish fries? Poison was added to

the fries. And what do they offer God in the Mass? When you find apparently pious

persons proving themselves as murderous there is a sudden reversal of expected events—

a peripeteia. And there is a story. A good man doing a good job does not make a story.

But when we discover a good man to be cruel it is a story. The death of the cute cats

reminds the readers the death of Duncan. ―Oh horror! Horror! Duncan‘s silver skin laced

with golden blood!‖ (Macbeth, Act II, Scene 3). And here soft velvety fur drenched in

saliva and excrement.

The poet digs a deep grave with trembling hands and buries the four cats poisoned to

death. The neighbours who killed the cats relish the scene peeping through the window

curtain. Here only the narrative could end dwelling on how men are different from one

another. While the poet weeps at the death of four cats his neighbours rejoice at it!!

Why did the neighbours poison the cats to death? The answer is simple. The cats

excreted on their vast compound. Well, in other words the cats trespassed the compound

of the neighbours. But the poet asks:

Where will

cats defecate?

Where will

all animals defecate?

Is this planet

man‘s sole property?

Trespass is an offence as decreed by Tort. Yes if the rats from my house go to yours

you can bring charge against us in the light of Tort. But can man ever control the rats or

discipline them? Besides man‘s right to property is ab initio bunk. Did man ever sit with


dogs and cats and rats and snakes and get the right to landed property with their consent?

Man is born upon earth just as dogs and rats are born. Everybody has the right to land.

When man speaks of right to property he has robbed land from other creatures created by

God. In the poem ―Write My Son, Write‖ God the Father tells us:

Birds and animals play

their assonant keys.

Man alone strikes

discordant notes. (K. V. Dominic Essential Readings . . . 76)

The neighbour poisoned four cats to death--a discordant note in the creation where

harmony and assonance rule. One wonders why man should strike a discordant note! God

the Father observes:

Your selfish mind

tries to ignore

benefits rendered

by these housemates. (K. V. Dominic Essential Readings . . . 77-78)

The cats are also housemates. And they help to keep rats and many diseases away.

Also they keep snakes away. But this is not all. God the Father says:

Your species

can‘t live alone.

Cattle, sheep,

goats, donkeys

dogs, cats

swine, fowl

I created

for your company; (K. V. Dominic Essential Readings . . . 78)

True. People who are at risk for depression, loneliness and isolation are relieved from

their complaints if they befriend cats. The cats often bring to people sense of happiness

and purpose who help them. Looking at the cats playing lowers the blood pressure. Thus

we must realize what God the Father posits:

Living beings and

lifeless objects

all inter-related. (K. V. Dominic Essential Readings . . . 77)

The poet observes in response to the complaints of the neighbours against cats:

Cats always conceal

their excrement

with soil around.

Man has to learn a lot

from these humble beasts. (K. V. Dominic Essential Readings . . . 94-95)

God the Father also asks man:


Why don‘t you

learn from Nature?

Animals and birds

present you models. (K. V. Dominic Essential Readings . . . 81)

The poet prays to God:

Kindly teach them

to learning to live

with the system.

Let my neighbours expiate,

dig out skeletons

of my cats;

tie them

to their necks

as Coleridge‘s

ancient mariner

did a century back

since he killed

the ominous albatross. (K. V. Dominic Essential Readings . . . 95)

The poet often refers to the cats killed as my cats. This does not mean that the cats

belonged to the poet‘s household. The poet has kinship with all things both great and

small. Because he knows that every insect and animal has been created by God just as

men are created by God. So all of us belong to one family. So the poet laments at the

death of the cats as we do when our kin die.

The poet, as it were, in a rage says that the neighbours should dig out the skeletons of

the cats and wear the skeletons around their necks. Indeed the fellow mariners made the

ancient mariner wear the carcass of albatross in a huff. But the poet does not curse his

neighbours by praying for decking them with the dead cats. Soon after wearing the dead

albatross the ancient mariner developed in him a love for slimy things. At once angels

came to his rescue and he was redeemed.

God the Father addresses man and says:

You are my own dear

as mosquito is. (K. V. Dominic Essential Readings . . . 83)

God the Father further notes:

It‘s your pettiness,

viewing things

in different ways,

thinking in opposites;

good and bad,

beautiful and ugly. (K. V. Dominic Essential Readings . . . 77)

In fact God cannot create anything ugly. There is nothing ugly in the creation. And

once ancient mariner learnt to love the slimy things he was redeemed. The poet wishes


that the pious neighbours understand that the creation is a system where every so called

trifle has its significant role to play and where everything is in harmony and everything is

our kin. We must love everything beautiful or ugly because nothing is ugly in God‘s

creation. This is how we can redeem ourselves in the eyes of God. And this is what we

look forward to when we attend a Mass.

Thus the poem is a narrative apparently mock heroic in style, littered with surprise and

woven with suspense. The object of Mass is at the heart of the poem. It is a revenge story

the other way round. The poet wants his neighbours to be redeemed in the eyes of God.

The poem is an interpretation of Coleridge‘s ―Ancient Mariner‖ on another level. This is

not all. The poem is an elegy with difference

Explication of the Poem “Lines Composed from Thodupuzha River’s

Bridge”

Looking down from your girdle bridge

my eyes and mind bathe in thy morning beauty.

Invigorating cool water gushing through your vein

overflows my mind with eternal realities.

Every second passed in our lives

is irredeemably lost forever.

Invisible Time flashes in meteoric speed;

the waters I gaze now also flow beyond my eyes.

Unlike the flash of bygone Time

it is never lost but remains immortal.

Born from the eternal Sahyas

it merges into the eternal ocean.

The Creator thus reveals To His creations

His perpetual relation and incessant love.

Rivers and oceans are embodiments of cosmic reality. (K. V. Dominic Essential

Readings . . . 138)

Thodupuzha is a magic name springing from the unvoiced fricative ‗th‘ with an ‗o‘ or

contracted vowel, navigating to ‗d‘ another voiced consonant and a labial contracted

vowel ending in the voiced fricative ‗zh‘ with an expanded velar vowel ‗aa‘. Does not the

sound of the name itself suggest the course of a river leaping forth from the green hills

flowing down to the seas? ‗Thodi‘ means a river. ‗Puzha‘ means a river. In other words

the name made of a compound word unites the opposites. And when we stand on its

bridge we are as it were at the confluence of opposites where lot of energy is generated.

The bridge is a girdle or a belt or cord defining the waist of ‗Thodi-puzha‘ a damsel of a

river. The poet stands on the bridge like a child clinging to the waist of its nurse or

mother. The poet‘s eyes and mind are bathed in her morning beauty. Invigorating cool

water gushes through the veins of the poet. And thoughts of eternal realities overflow the

poet‘s mind. This is the state when man dips into the waters. At that time the awareness

of the contingent vanishes and the realities show up. The flowing waters are certainly

symbolic of the flow of time. Time that flows away is irredeemably lost. And despite that


when one climbs the bridge between that which is and that which is not, one realises an

eternity that cannot be expressed in words. The feeling of the same is being evoked by

the poem. Hence it is a symbolist poem.

The river born of the eternal Sahyas merges into eternal ocean. The Sahya mountains

hark back to Gondwana period of 150 million years ago. So they are eternal. The

mountains are the abodes of gods. They are symbolic of eternally eloquent silence. From

the eternally eloquent silence the river pours down into the eternally silent eloquence—

the seas. The opposites are made of the same stuff. Life is a river that springs from

eloquent silence. It gives a tongue to silence only to merge into the silence of eloquent

seas. So life is a journey from eternity to eternity from silence to silence from eloquence

to eloquence. And that which flows from eternity to eternity cannot be momentary.

Hence the momentariness existence is a myth and Maya. The ceaseless flow or flux of

existence is looked upon by the poet as ceaseless flow of God‘s compassion and love for

the creation. And even though every moment of the prosaic past drops off and becomes

the part of poetic and then vanishes like bubbles in the air, nothing is lost. This is what

the poet realises standing on the bridge on the river of Time. The poem is laden with

paradox. And in fact paradox of poetry! What cannot be communicated through prose

must be told in poetry.

Explication of the Poem “Parental Duty”

What right have parents on their children?

What right has man on this universe?

Are we the cause of the existence?

This flow has started time immemorial

Aren‘t we just bubbles of that great flow?

You can‘t rein the flow of the system

But simply flow like an autumn leaf

Why then concern too much of your offspring?

Never dig your grave as Dhritarashtra did

Best is to be models to your children

Leading lives of dharma and karma. (K. V. Dominic Essential Readings . . . 239)

Nowadays the world is too much with us discussing rights. In our country it is

assumed that parents do have at least certain rights on their children. The parents bring up

their children. Consequently they expect that their children should look after them when

they grow old and infirm. In other words parents may think that it is their legal right to be

looked after in their old age by their children. The Welfare and Senior citizens Act 2007

makes a legal obligation for the heirs and children to provide maintenance to senior

citizens and parents by monthly allowance. But is the right to monthly allowance from

the children enough for the parent? When there is a divorce or separation there is quarrel

between the mother and the father of a child as to who should get the custody of the

child. To get the right to possess, the custody of a child implies the right to fulfil the

obligations to a child. True, right might mean prerogative or privilege. But prerogative to


serve a person or a thing or in other words prerogative to perform any duty could be a

right. Thus right, a moral or legal entitlement to have or do something means slavery to

something only by choice in this context. If philosophical accounts of parental rights and

obligations are taken into account we feel that the rights and obligations associated with

parenthood is neither grounded on biological consideration nor on natural relationship

between parent and children. It is a social construct. It is a myth. And the parents claim

that they have the right to decide for their children or the parents have the right to be

looked after by the children. They are cherishing a myth in that case.

There are philosophers who think that children should have the same rights that the

adults enjoy. If someone has better capacity in any particular field than any other person

it does not mean that the lack of capacity of one will imply denial of one‘s rights. A

difference in capabilities does not justify turning down the rights to children. From our

point of view parents have been instrumental in bringing a child to the world. May be the

inscrutable Nature willed the birth of the child. Parents may be instrumental in bringing

up children. But the child belongs to the society and to the Nature. The parents have no

right to possess the child. A poet may have been responsible for forging a poem. But once

it is published it belongs to the readers. The poet himself might be one among the readers.

Despite this we have a sense of possession over our children. This notion of ownership is

psychological and based upon make-believe. It is distinct from legal ownership. The

notion of legal ownership is also a human construct. But since they are believed in by us

and by our fellowmen who constitute the society, they seem to acquire a kind of

objectivity. When two persons see a ghost it is deemed as objective. And our minds are

full of such objective stuff and man is doomed to be a denizen of a world of make-

believe. The poet thunders upon us: What right have the parents on their children? The

next line of the poem is more scathing: What right has man on this universe?

The astronomers of yore thought that the earth was at the centre of the universe. With

the advent of Copernicus the pride of place of the earth was shattered. Earth is just a

planet like other planets and they all circum-ambulate the Sun instead of the Sun and the

planets and the stars circum-ambulating the earth. With Newton and his successor

astronomers and the advent of more and more powerful telescope the notion of our

visible universe widened. It clearly pointed out that our solar system is just a solar system

among myriads of such solar systems in the existence. The visible universe is at least 93

billion years across. None can see the edge of the universe. May be there is no edge of the

universe. In the face of it our solar system itself is less than a midge and what is man

there? So the universe does not care a crumb for man. All that man is concerned with is

pleasure or pain. That is the sum or end of human life. But the universe is listless. Dumb

forces are working there.

How come man could ever have rights on the universe? There is the searching

question: Are we men the cause of the existence? Existence here has meaning on many

levels. Existence implies all that exists. As we have observed earlier the multi-verse is

measureless. All that exist are measureless. How could man whose presence here tends to

almost nihility be the cause of the measureless multi-verse? Existence might mean the


state of living or way of life. Our lives also are not in our hands. We were not born on our

own. And we are never free to determine the course of our life. So the fact stands that we

are not the cause of our existence.

With the poet the existence is a flow. True we cannot see the existence as it is. We

cannot but look upon it through time and space. Everything whatever we espy in the

world of eye and ear as well as in the world inward, changes every nanosecond. Even our

bodies and minds are ever in flux. Hence the existence as we perceive is but a sequence

of phantasmogoric visions, a flow signifying the impact of time where nothing holds on

even for a twinkle of an eye. The poet observes that this flow has started since time

immemorial. Because empirically time has no beginning and in course of its ceaseless

journey it lays bare ever new visions only to be withdrawn the next second to make room

for other emergent visions. Here amidst this flow are we not mere bubbles that vanish

into the thin air in a fraction of a second? Is it not funny that a bubble carried along a

stream seeks to control the stream itself?

Once we understand our position in the multi-verse impelled by the arrow of time that

never changes its course, once we know that ourselves being mere bubbles popping out

of a flow, we can never ever rein the galloping pony of time. We should get rid of our

foolish fantasies to control our children or baulk the existence. Earlier Newtonian physics

thought that it could unlock the mystery of the universe. But right now in the light of

chaos theory it is evident that Nature is unknown and unknowable. The existence is a

very complicated system or network of myriads of forces impossible to decode. Hence

instead of trying to baulk the arrow of time we had better float along with it. We cannot

undo a flood or an earthquake. Our science can at best announce that certain areas are

flood prone or earthquake prone. What we should do is to evacuate those areas.

But are we civilised enough to welcome our brethren come from earthquake prone

lands? We must get rid of our obstinacies like racism, nationalism, religious fanaticism

and the like to adjust with the freaks of Nature. Hence we had better float like autumn

leaves along the stream of measureless existence which is ever in flux. To float like

autumn leaves implies that we must not will anything in course of our life‘s journey. We

need not be much concerned with our children or worldly affairs. The poet exhorts:

―Never dig your grave as Dhritarashtra did.‖ This is polysemic. Dhritarashtra a

protagonist of the Mahabharata is a doting father who dug his own grave. How come? He

was blinded with his affection for his children. He always supported the evil designs of

his children to find them happy. The boundless cravings of his children for the right to

things that do not belong to them brought about their own destruction. Nothing happened

to Dhritarashtra personally. And despite that the poet says that Dhritarashtra dug his own

grave. It is because of the fact that to find oneself amidst the graves of one‘s children is

perhaps worse than to be in one‘s grave. And we must not dig our graves the way

Dhritarashtra did.

On another level Dhrita rashtra means one who owns a state—the king. King

Dhritarashtra of the Mahabharata is blind. Similarly the statesmen of our time are blind.

The citizens of the state are their children as it were. Being too much concerned with his


own children Dhritarashtra caused great damage to his children, his subjects and thereby

dug his grave. The same takes place in India today. Just as the father should not always

try to satisfy the cravings of their children, similarly the rulers must not dance to the tune

of the caprices of their subjects. What could they do then? Well, the poet tells us that the

fathers and kings must pursue the path of dharma and karma. Dharma or religion derived

from religare is that which binds the world together. It speaks of harmony. Karma is that

activity which is performed with a view to binding everyone together. In other words

karma is the activity as prescribed by dharma. Once the father or king performs dharma

and karma he becomes the role model. The children of the father or of the pater familias

or a ruler are apt to follow their role model. If Dhritarashtra‘s activities meant digging his

own grave, the karma or activities of a father or a king as prescribed by dharma will pave

our way to eternal life. Hari OM!

Stylistic Analysis of the Poem “Long Live E. K. Nayanar”

Prof. K. V. Dominic claims in his preface to Essential Readings and Study Guide that

since he gives priority to the content of his poems he does not pay attention to the style of

his write up. That is why, he observes, his poems lack much imagery and other figures of

speech. True. He is one among us, a common man sharing his emotions with his

fellowmen--the common run of men. And his poems are deceptively simple. But are they

really simple? Are they really sans rhetoric? Let us read the first seven lines of his poem

―Long Live E. K. Nayanar‖:

―Long live E. K. Nayanar‖

The mantra is being muttered

by millions of your comrades.

We are in a trance

since you bade us ―Good bye.‖

It‘s impossible to believe

our dearest CM is no more. (―Long Live E. K. Nayanar‖ 3)

There are some 48 words in the above lines and thirteen of them have either M or N

distributed among the seven lines. Consequently there are alliterations. Besides,

repetitions and variations make a pattern. So, sound system of the poem has a well

wrought pattern. M and N are nasal sounds. They give you the sound of a bell. M is a

stop consonant and nasal. So it gives us a note that leaves much in suggestion after being

uttered. Another voiced soft consonant and stop consonant only repeating once in ―Since

you bade us Good bye‖ is a shift from the recurring sound of M and N and puts bell on a

different key. Amidst the moaning sound generated by M and N the voiced sounds B and

G of ―bidding good bye‖ indicates a different parole. We can hear it as Nayanar bidding

us good bye amidst the mourning of the masses. This clearly shows that Mr. Nayanar

readily welcomes the journey to the realm from where borne no man returns. This is radio

drama where we visualize a drama through hearing only. But the poet who is one with the

masses exclaims that it is impossible to believe that Nayanar is no longer with us. This is

how the poet casts his spell upon the readers. What is real is transformed into a dream.


One wonders whether the death of Nayanar is a dream and not real. While our intellect

and senses know that Nayanar has died, our hearts do not believe in what the senses

including the intellect know. Dominic through his way of speaking or rhetoric awakens

the heart of the readers against their senses. Thus Dominic is the poet who charges the

hearts of the readers with feelings that revolt against the senses with subtle rhetoric. He is

different. So Dominic‘s poems are not shorn of rhetoric.

About the author

Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya, (b. 1947), M A

(Triple), M Phil, PhD is a retired college teacher now residing at

Belur Math, Howrah, West Bengal, India. A Bilingual writer

(English and Bengali), he has been writing on different subjects

for the last thirty years. He has his PhD in the Buddhist

Philosophy. He seeks to retrieve the wealth of poetry when it is a

revelation. Dr Mukhopadhyaya is a soldier of the Underground

Poetry Movement in present day Bengali literature. He has

philosophically and critically interpreted K. V. Dominic‘s

masterpiece poem ―Write My Son, Write‖ and it was published as

an e-book by Modern History Press in 2016. Dr Mukhopdhyaya has been awarded

Ashutosh Mukherjee gold medal for writing a treatise on modern Bengali drama. He

leads a group of online writers called [email protected] which has more than

150 members.

Index

A

A Blissful Voyage, 58

A Nightmare, 31, 32, 34, 48, 52,

54

A Sheep‘s Wail, 29, 62

A Tribute to Sakuntala Devi, 15

Ammini, 25

Ammini‘s Lament, 24–25, 29–

30

An Airport Made of Tears, 55

An Elegy on My Ma, 4–6, 25,

26, 27–29, 40

An Ideal Festival, 14

Anand‘s Lot, 46, 62

Arundhatidarsananyaya, 21

Ayodhya, 11, 45

B

Barthes, R., 3, 19

Baudeau, A., 42

Beauty, 34, 49, 62

Bhaba Atomic Research

Institute, 41

Blake, 2, 49

Brahma, 21, 45, 47, 65

Browning, 31

C

Caste Lunatics, 50

casteism, 57

Chaucer, 56

Child Trafficking, 46

City Versus Village, 55

Coleridge, 43, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71,

73, 74

Connubial Bliss, 33, 62

Cromwell, 29

Crow, the Black Beauty, 49

Cuckoo Singing, 62

D

Devi, S., 20

Dhritarastra, 34

Dominic

defined, 4

dropouts, 48

Durgasaptasati, 26

E

elegies, 21–31

F

For the Glory of God, 14

Freud, 4

G

Gayatri‘s Solitude, 32, 62

Gondwana, 10, 75

guṇa, 7–8

H

Hardy, 19

Harvest Feast, 41, 62

Haves and Have-nots, 50, 63

Helen and her World, 35

Hindu Marriage Act, 5

Howard, E., 11

HUF, 5

Hungry Mouths, 54

I

I can Hear the Groan of Mother

Earth, 15

IAF Vayu Shakti 2010, 61

In Memoriam George Joson, 21,

20–24, 22, 45–46

India Number One, 51

International Women‘s Day, 35–

36

J

Joson, G., 20–24

K

Keats, 32, 35

Kerala, 12–16

L

La Belle Dame Sans Merci, 35

Lal salaam to Labourers, 42

Laxmi‘s Plea, 37, 52

Lines Composed from

Thodupuzha River‘s Bridge,

9–10, 74–75

Lines Composed Upon

Westminster Bridge, 9

London, 9, 10, 41, 42, 56

Long Live E. K. Nayanar, 12,

21, 23, 79

Lottery Tickets Sellers, 48–49

M

Mahabali, 3, 13, 15

Mahesvara, 65

Mahi‘s Fourth Birthday, 47

Martyrs at the Borders, 60, 61

Massacre of Cats, 30, 68–72

Maternal Attachment, 16

Maveli, 3, 13

Milton, 29, 36

Miscault, 4

Mother India, I Weep, 61

Mother‘s Love, 26

Mukesh‘s Destiny, 47

Mukhopadhyaya, 35, 81

Multicultural Harmony, 39, 47,

59


Multicultural Kerala, 14, 43

Musings from an Infant‘s Face,

38

N

Nature Weeps, 38, 48

Nature‘s Bounties, 59

Nayanar, E.K., 12

O

On Conservation, 21

Onam, 3, 12–14

P

Parasurama, 10

Parental Duty, 34, 75–78

Parents Deserted, 33

physiocrats, 6, 40, 41, 42

Plato, 7, 20

poetryscapes, 2

Purusha, 49

R

Rahul‘s World, 48, 52

rajasika, 9

Ramkrisna Kathamrita, 7

Resolution, 38, 40, 52

Rocketing Growth of India!, 51,

53

S

Sahyadri, 10

Sail of Life, 56

Saint Thomas, 7

Sankaracharya, 4

sattvika, 1, 7, 9, 49, 65

Sayers, D., 59

Schumacher, E.F., 59

Servants Assume Masters, 53

Shakespeare, 1, 6, 23, 24, 25, 39

Siachen Tragedy, 31, 66–68

T

tamasika, 9

Teresa‘s Tears, 52

Thodupuzha, 9–12

Thodupuzha Municipal Park, 20

To My Colleague, 58

To My Deceased Cats, 31

Tribute to Siachen Martyrs, 45,

60

Trump, 6

Tsunami Camps, 54

V

Vaisyas, 49

Valmiki, 20–21, 47

Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, 60

vermilion, 40

Victory to thee Mother India, 16

Vishnu, 10, 13, 15, 65

W

Water, Water, Everywhere, 42

West Bengal, 14, 43, 81

What a Birth, 52

What is Karma?, 7

Where shall I Flee from This

Fretful Land, 16

Wolfgang, 15

Wordsworth, 9, 10

Write My Son, Write, 50, 59

Y

Yeats, 32

―Write My Son, Write‖ is K. V. Dominic‘s

longest poem, in 21 sections taken from his

collection of poems entitled Write Son, Write.

Dominic unabashedly tackles everyday issues of

India such as the social injustice of poverty, man‘s

crass exploitation of natural resources that ought to

belong to everyone, terrorism, and the eternal

beauty of the natural world. This poem is the

manifesto of Dominic‘s views and philosophies.

About this work, K.V. Dominic writes, ―People

today are crazy after materialism, and divinity in

them is being lost to such an extent that they give

no importance to principles, values, family and

social relations, cohabitance with human beings

and other beings. Instead they are trying their

maximum to exploit their fellow beings, other

beings and the planet itself. If it goes like this, the

total destruction is not far away. It is the duty of

the religious leaders, political leaders and the intelligentsia to inject the lost values to the

masses and thus preserve this planet and the inhabitants from the imminent devastation.

Instead, majority of these leaders become mafias and inject communal and corruptive

venom to the minds of the masses. Corruption has become the hallmark of these leaders

and influenced by them the masses also deviate from the right track to the evil track. And

who will save this society? Writers, particularly poets who are like prophets.‖

Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya's commentary provides the most complete

critical analysis of the poem, section-by-section and line-by-line. Born in 1947 Ramesh

Chandra Mukhopadhyaya M A (Triple) MPhil, PhD is a retired college teacher now

residing at Howrah, West Bengal, India, A Bilingual writer (English and Bengali), he has

been writing on different subjects for the last thirty years. He seeks to retrieve the wealth

of poetry when it is a revelation. Dr. Mukhopadhyaya regards K. V. Dominic as a poet of

a seer.

K. V. Dominic's Write My Son, Write--Text and Interpretation:

An Exercise in Close Reading (ISBN 978-1-61599-305-5)



K. V. Dominic Essential Readings gathers for

the first time the three most important works of

poetry from this shining new light of contemporary

Indian verse in English: Winged Reason, Write

Son, Write and Multicultural Symphony. A fourth

collection of 22 previously unpublished poems

round out a complete look at the first 12 years of

Dominic‘s prolific and profound verse. Each poem

includes unique Study Guide questions suitable for

South Asian studies curricula.

Written in free verse, each of his poems makes

the reader contemplate on intellectual, philo-

sophical, spiritual, political, and social issues of

the present world. Themes range from multi-

culturalism, environmental issues, social mafia,

caste-ism, exploitation of women and children,

poverty, and corruption to purely introspective

matters. From the observation of neighborhood life

to international events, and everyday forgotten tragedies of India, nothing escapes the

grasp of Dominic‘s keen sense of the fragility of life and morality in the modern world.

Praise for the verse of K. V. Dominic

―K. V. Dominic is one of the most vibrant Indian English poets whose intense passion

for the burning social and national ailments makes him a disciple of Ezekielean School of

poetry. His poetic passion for the natural beauty keeps him besides the Romanticists.‖

-- Dr. A. K. Choudhary, English poet, critic and editor, Professor of English, Assam,

India

―K. V. Dominic is a poet of the suffering masses and oppressed sections of the society.

He tries to dissect corruption at all levels, political or religious, social or academic and

presents it in its true colours with all the ugliness and monstrous greed.‖

--Prof. T. V. Reddy, reputed English poet, writer and critic, Emeritus Professor of

English from Andhra Pradesh, India

K.V. Dominic Essential Readings: Poems about Social Justice, Women's Rights, and

the Environment (ISBN 978-1-61599-302-4)



Inside one of Contemporary India's most Influential Poets

The twenty-four papers in Philosophical

Musings for a Meaningful Life study the poetry

collections Winged Reason (2010), Write Son,

Write (2011), and Multicultural Symphony (2014),

of Dr. K.V. Dominic and reveal his humanistic

values and concept of universal brotherhood, his

social criticism devoid of absurdity and obscurity,

his profound concern for the marginalized sections

of society, and his reverence for Nature. All the

papers focus on the poet's anguish at the evils and

the inhuman attitude prevalent in the society and

necessitate harmony of existence. In the context of

Indian English poetry, the papers find Dominic to

be unique in his use of simple and plain language

to address the vast canvass of human life and the

neglected segment of human society. Further, the

papers bring out how the universal appeal of Dominic lies in his ability to view the world

as a sanctuary and acknowledge him as the promising voice of the present century for his

belief in the interrelatedness of all lives that ascertains positive change in the individuals.

Dr. S. Kumaran, Editor, is working as an Assistant Professor in the Postgraduate &

Research Department of English, Thiruvalluvar Government Arts College, Rasipuram.

He is Associate Editor of two refereed international biannual journals, Writers Editors

Critics (WEC) and International Journal on Multicultural Literature (IJML); and a

Member of the Editorial Boards of various journals from India and abroad.

―This critical study on the poetry of Dr. K.V. Dominic deserves to be read closely for

evaluation and to be on the shelf of every notable library. Philosophical Musings for a

Meaningful Life will inspire scholars from the West to find rubies and diamonds in the

Indian poetry of today.‖

--Dr. Stephen Gill, Poet Laureate of Ansted University

―K.V. Dominic's social consciousness is his chief forte. Not for a moment does he

divert attention from the simple and innocent activities of ordinary human beings. From

his lyrics originate feelings of eternal sympathy, peace, and fraternal unity.‖

--P.C.K. Prem, critic from Himachal Pradesh, India

Philosophical Musings for Meaningful Life: An Analysis of K.V. Dominic's Poems

(ISBN 978-1-61599-266-9)

Documents

K.V. Dominic Criticism and Commentary. V. Dominic Criticism--Word file.pdf · cause is not there in the world. Cause is a priori form of intuition which we add to the world. Even